High-performance carbon-fibre composite does not necessarily become waste because it has reached the end of its useful life. Sometimes it becomes a leftover before it has ever been used.
Pultruded carbon-fibre profiles produced for wind-turbine applications can leave sections of pristine material that do not match the dimensions required by the original customer. SCMM is investigating how these high-value production leftovers from Aksa Carbon can instead become structural material for another sector: transport.
The selected application is a cantilever seat frame for buses. Using a lightweight design and topology-optimisation approach, the team is redesigning the structure around the properties of the unidirectional carbon-fibre reinforced profiles while also studying how the material can be joined effectively to other components. The objective is to maintain the required structural behaviour using substantially less mass.
For the IVECO bus configurations studied, the designs indicate weight reductions of 2.2 kg for a single-seat frame and 3.54 kg for a double-seat frame. Applied across the example configuration of 12 single and 15 double seats, this would correspond to around 80 kg of potential vehicle weight reduction.
The impact is twofold: giving valuable carbon-fibre material a second market before it becomes waste, while using it to make transport lighter and more resource-efficient.
High-performance carbon-fibre composite does not necessarily become waste because it has reached the end of its useful life. Sometimes it becomes a leftover before it has ever been used.
Pultruded carbon-fibre profiles produced for wind-turbine applications can leave sections of pristine material that do not match the dimensions required by the original customer. SCMM is investigating how these high-value production leftovers from Aksa Carbon can instead become structural material for another sector: transport.
The selected application is a cantilever seat frame for buses. Using a lightweight design and topology-optimisation approach, the team is redesigning the structure around the properties of the unidirectional carbon-fibre reinforced profiles while also studying how the material can be joined effectively to other components. The objective is to maintain the required structural behaviour using substantially less mass.
For the IVECO bus configurations studied, the designs indicate weight reductions of 2.2 kg for a single-seat frame and 3.54 kg for a double-seat frame. Applied across the example configuration of 12 single and 15 double seats, this would correspond to around 80 kg of potential vehicle weight reduction.
The impact is twofold: giving valuable carbon-fibre material a second market before it becomes waste, while using it to make transport lighter and more resource-efficient.