Abstract

FIBRE4YARDS project aims to improve the competitiveness of small and medium European shipyards working with Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRP). To this extent, the project expects to bring new automated cost-efficient production technologies to the shipyard (adaptive moulds, ATP/AFP, 3D printing, curved pultrusion profiles, hot stamping, innovative composite connections) from other competitive industrial sectors, and to transfer, adapt and combine them to improve FRP shipyards’ production and maintenance.

In order to incorporate all new manufacturing technologies into the ship design, FIBRE4YARDS will develop new advanced computational tools and numerical formulations specially developed to characterize the new procedures. Ship design will also take into account the environmental impact of the materials and manufacturing technologies used, based on a Life Cycle Assessment.

All new production procedures will be implemented in a new Shipyard 4.0 environment which, among other features, will be interconnected thanks to IoT technologies, and will be continuously monitored to ensure high quality processes using a digital twin of the shipyard.

Special care will be taken to ensure that all technologies proposed by FIBRE4YARDS project comply with the actual standards, writing new guidelines when those do not exist, and that can be implemented in European Shipyards smoothly and straightforward. With the proposed approach, shipyards will improve their production capacity and the quality of the ships manufactured, making them more safe and efficient.

Abstract

Currently, the manufacture of fiberglass composite parts for the automotive industry is limited by the curing times of the resins. The curing of this type of parts is usually done at room temperature, which entails waiting times of up to 48 hours. The purpose of this study is to analyse the curing times of the pieces made with ultraviolet curing resin to replace the conventional temperature curing. In the case of ultraviolet radiation curing, the geometry of the part has a significant importance in curing times. To carry out this study, the UV lamp has been characterized to determine the irradiance at different distances. Once the irradiance is obtained as a function of the distance, the curing time of the prepreg test tubes was determined by means of a dielectric analysis (DEA). As a result, a mathematical model capable of approximating the curing time of different types of pieces based on their geometry and distance from the spotlight has been obtained. In this way, it is possible to create a strategy that optimizes the process. This process is much more efficient than the hand lay-up (HLU) used up to now, so it could be a good substitute if you want to increase the production of fiberglass composite parts.