Pushing the limits of thermoplastics

In this Q&A, TenCate Advanced Composites’ global director product and market strategy, John Darlington speaks to Mike Richardson about the company’s increasing penetration in the aerospace sector.

TenCate Advanced Composites (TCAC) has been a market leader in the supply of prepreg materials for many years. Following a period of significant investment for the UK operation of the company, the 2016 opening of TenCate’s European Centre of Excellence for thermoset prepreg systems facility at Langley Mill, Nottingham signalled a statement of intent in its growth and commitment to serving the European markets with certified high quality, high-spec materials and solutions.

With its production of unidirectional tapes and woven-based prepreg composite materials for aerospace, space and satellite and communications markets, together with a doubling of capacity, TenCate’s new facility now houses a carbon-free manufacturing line dedicated to the manufacture of electrically-pure materials for the aerospace and defence sectors, from general aviation through to rotorcraft and into mainframe aerospace solutions.

A strategic union

Back in March this year, TenCate announced it has reached an agreement with integrated chemicals and materials group, Toray Industries on the acquisition of TenCate Advanced Composites.

The combination of TenCate and Toray brings together complementary product offerings in high performance composites and there is strong strategic rationale for the transaction, with clear benefits for both companies.

For TenCate, the combination with Toray secures access to a source of highly-specified carbon fibre, a crucial component to supporting the needs of customers. The combination of TCAC and Toray will enhance new product development and R&D capabilities and reinforce and expand relationships with customers.

Both companies have agreed to jointly develop an integration plan to support the envisaged growth plans. Toray expects to retain the key management of TCAC following completion of the transaction and respect the existing rights and benefits of the employees of the TCAC Group. Toray will acquire TCAC for an enterprise value of €930 million.

Q) Composite materials are widely used in structures, such as wings, in what other areas are they making inroads?

Typically, what we are seeing is where a lot of composites have been adopted into main structures there are other applications such as for helicopters and rotorcraft, i.e. the tail and the boom arm and the rotor area are all converted thermoset composites. In commercial aircraft, we also see a large adoption of composites into aircraft interiors to really look at ‘weight-out’ solutions and increase FST performance and increase resistance to fatigue and reduce ongoing maintenance costs.

Q) What materials/processes are you developing that will help to reduce cycle times?

Facilitating the adoption of high volume manufacturing provides a fantastic opportunity for composites. Supporting the design process through Expert Services is critical to finding the right solutions. To this end, we are firstly considering thermoset technologies, where we see a clear need for Out of Autoclave (OoA) processes to try and reduce the conversion time for medium volume production quantities, but also compression moulding with 4-minute cycle times for complex parts. Secondly, TenCate continues to push the limits of thermoplastic composites. Here, we are looking at much higher production volumes, we are looking at just a few minutes for the conversion of a thermoplastic composite, integrating overmoulding and inserts, and this is a very key area for TenCate’s developments.

Q) How do you expect the use of composites to grow in the aerospace sector?

Greater adoption of new composite technology is needed to support three market drivers, volume of airframe production, weight reduction driven by fuel efficiency of current aircraft designs and at some future stage, the introduction of electric aircraft and their design requirements. Where this all comes into play is increasing further the ultimate performance of the composites, so that added weight reductions can be achieved, through the integration of more composite structures, the elimination of mechanical fixation points through welding or jointing and the reduction of secondary operations through better surface quality of the composite structure.

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