Toray Industries, Inc. (head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Akihiro Nikkaku; hereinafter referred to as “Toray”) announced today that it developed an innovative prepreg for primary structural components of aircraft that enables high-grade carbon fiber reinforced plastic (hereinafter referred to as “CFRP”) molding with excellent mechanical characteristics without using an autoclave. The company will further deepen this new technology to expand demand for high performance CFRP components with low processing cost in various applications including aircraft, vehicles and general industrial use.
In general, CFRP primary structural components, used for the main wings and fuselage of an aircraft, are manufactured using an autoclave process method by laminating prepregs sheets, which are carbon fibers impregnated in epoxy resin, on a mold and heating them in an autoclave by applying high pressure to cure the resin. While the autoclave method has an advantage of stable molding for high performance, high quality CFRP components, it requires high initial capital investment, thus increasing the production cost of CFRP components.
To replace an autoclave method, Toray last year developed a vacuum pressure molding technology, in which CFRP is manufactured with one atmospheric pressure under vacuum suction, and recently developed a prepreg that is suitable for this vacuum pressure molding technology. The new prepreg, enabled by a newly developed novel matrix resin, has mechanical performance -- compression strength after an impact and tensile strength -- equivalent to a primary structural components of aircraft using existing prepreg and molded with an autoclave method.
