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Resin transfer moulding is top application

A Huntsman Advanced Materials product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 27, 2006

Huntsman Advanced Materials has won the highly prestigious 2006 China Composites Expo-JEC Innovation Award for the best application for FRP/Composites Production.

Huntsman Advanced Materials has won the highly prestigious 2006 China Composites Expo-JEC Innovation Award for the best application for FRP/Composites Production.

It was presented in Shanghai, China on Monday 4th September 2006.

The award recognised Huntsman's development of the Advanced Resin Transfer Moulding system (RTM), used on a prototyping project with the ATR Group and Ferrari.

The ATR Group, an Italian consortium comprising nine leading companies involved in the research and production of advanced structural composite parts and components, were commissioned by Ferrari to develop the prototype for a the extremely complex and intricate engine air box for the Ferrari F430.

For this challenging project, the ATR Group specified the revolutionary new Advanced RTM system from Huntsman Advanced Materials.

RTM is an established moulding process in which a catalysed resin is transferred into an enclosed mould, lined with reinforced fibrous material.

It then may or may not be heated to complete the moulding process.

The main benefit of RTM is that it combines relatively low cost tooling and equipment costs with the ability to consolidate large structural parts.

Huntsman's Advanced RTM system is so innovative that it enables the production of detailed composite parts in a single shot.

It also reduces the weight of the part by minimising the amount of resin used.

With the Ferrari F430 engine air box, the weight of the finished prototype part was virtually halved from the aluminium original - down from 4.1kg to just 2.4kg.

This was achieved by using a special, flexible silicone membrane rather than the usual metal RTM mould, which enabled the resin content to reduced and the reinforced fibre content to be increased.

Although highly complex, the prototype part produced using this Advanced RTM system was extremely accurate - even the engine flange drill holes matched up with no further finishing required.

Receiving the Award, Dr Chih Chang of Huntsman Advanced Materials said "We're delighted to receive this Award which recognises such a significant advancement in RTM technology".

"With this system it is possible to produce highly complex, yet lightweight composite parts in a single shot".

"This versatile laminating system makes RTM an even more time and cost effective tooling option for our customers".

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