Case Study - Volvo Polestar Racing - Tip tows
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This article has been published on Race Tech Magazine website COMFO03 v1.3 Tip tows Mention carbon fibre and most people think of a single substance. Despite the fact that the phrase has become so synonymous with carbon fibre there’s still a tendency to forget that it is actually a composite of several different materials; each with their own structure and layout. In their most basic form the carbon fibres themselves are filaments of a graphite-like material, around a tenth of the diameter of a human hair. When several thousand such fibres are bunched together they become what’s known as a tow. And these, in turn, can be woven together to form the sheets of carbon fibre fabric that are ultimately laid up to form the parts you see on everything from Formula One cars to ocean racing yachts. It’s a process that carbon fibre specialist Oxeon knows well. The company was formed by a group of materials researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden to market a unique tape weaving technology that they had developed. Spin forward nearly a decade and Oxeon has become a regular supplier to the motorsport industry. In particular, it’s worked closely with Volvo’s official racing partner Polestar Racing, to produce lightweight carbon fibre panels for the company’s entries to the Swedish Touring Car Championship. During this partnership, Polestar Racing took the title in 2009 and 2010, and came close to repeating the performance after the series was incorporated into the new Scandinavian Touring Car Championship in 2011. The fabric underpinning all these applications is Oxeon’s TeXtreme material, which uses a combination of the firm’s Spread Tow and Tape Weaving Technologies. “By spreading fibre tows into tapes the fibres are arranged in the straightest possible orientation,” explains Oxeon’s Christian Borg. “A fabric woven using such tapes exploits the fibre properties most efficiently to improve tensile strength and compressive performance as well as, crucially, reducing weight.” The finished panels were made in cooperation with Elitkomposit, another Swedish firm that manufactures epoxy-based products reinforced with carbon fibre and other materials. Using Elitkomposit’s expertise in various production methods ranging from resin transfer moulding (RTM) and vacuum infusion to Autoclaving the two companies were able to produce a whole range of products including wings, side and front crash protection bars and door-cladding. “All processes are used to produce the different parts in the best possible way. What is best for each product depends on complexity of geometry, fibre architecture, serial length and so on,” notes Borg.
Transcript of Case Study - Volvo Polestar Racing - Tip tows
This article has been published on Race Tech Magazine website
COMFO03 v1.3
Tip tows Mention carbon fibre and most people think of a single substance. Despite the fact that the phrase has become so synonymous with carbon fibre there’s still a tendency to forget that it is actually a composite of several different materials; each with their own structure and layout.
In their most basic form the carbon fibres themselves are filaments of a graphite-like material, around a tenth of the diameter of a human hair. When several thousand such fibres are bunched
together they become what’s known as a tow. And these, in turn, can be woven together to form the sheets of carbon fibre fabric that are ultimately laid up to form the parts you see on everything from Formula One cars to ocean racing yachts.
It’s a process that carbon fibre specialist Oxeon knows well. The company was formed by a group of materials researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden to market a unique tape weaving technology that they had developed.
Spin forward nearly a decade and Oxeon has become a regular supplier to the motorsport industry. In particular, it’s worked closely with Volvo’s official racing partner Polestar Racing, to produce lightweight carbon fibre panels for the company’s entries to the Swedish Touring Car Championship. During this partnership, Polestar Racing took the title in 2009 and 2010, and came close to repeating the performance after the series was incorporated into the new Scandinavian Touring Car Championship in 2011.
The fabric underpinning all these applications is Oxeon’s TeXtreme material, which uses a combination of the firm’s Spread Tow and Tape Weaving Technologies.
“By spreading fibre tows into tapes the fibres are arranged in the straightest possible orientation,” explains Oxeon’s Christian Borg. “A fabric woven using such tapes exploits the fibre properties most efficiently to improve tensile strength and compressive performance as well as, crucially, reducing weight.”
The finished panels were made in cooperation with Elitkomposit, another Swedish firm that manufactures epoxy-based products reinforced with carbon fibre and other materials. Using Elitkomposit’s expertise in various production methods ranging from resin transfer moulding (RTM) and vacuum infusion to Autoclaving the two companies were able to produce a whole range of products including wings, side and front crash protection bars and door-cladding. “All processes are used to produce the different parts in the best possible way. What is best for each product depends on complexity of geometry, fibre architecture, serial length and so on,” notes Borg.
This article has been published on Race Tech Magazine website
COMFO03 v1.3
Elitkomposit’s contribution to the collaboration proved extremely useful, working with Polestar Racing’s design department to incorporate manufacturability into the composite parts. Having received the TeXtreme fabric directly from Oxeon, Elitkomposit produced the composite parts using both in prepreg and dry form injection.
One particularly good example of an application in which the properties of TeXtreme came into their own was the radiator duct running from the front of the car to the heat exchanger, Borg explains: “Under normal conditions it needs to be stiff enough to resist the airflow pressure and not to cave in or create resonance through vibrations. However, under impact conditions it should not transfer any force to the condenser at the point of collision in order to prevent damage to the radiator. We managed to achieve both these properties using an ultra-thin laminate of TeXtreme. The exemplary properties of the fabric result in the necessary stiffness under normal operating conditions but the thin laminate construction allows it to crumple upon impact, dissipating the impact forces.”
Volvo Polestar Racing team manager Christian Dahl was pleased with the results. “We have used TeXtreme on selected composite parts on the car and have achieved substantial weight savings,” he comments. “The flexibility of TeXtreme has also been beneficial when different mechanical properties have been desired for different parts.”
The cooperation between the two companies remains, but Polestar Racing has now moved on to the World Touring Car Championship. What’s not changed, however, is that Oxeon continues to refine the process of weaving tows to create unique carbon fibre fabrics. And it’s the sheer range of different attributes that can be influenced by things like weaving techniques that illustrates how different carbon fibre materials can be.
