SAERTEX wins JEC Innovation Award 2014

The project team accepted the award in the "Wind Energy" category on March 11, 2014 during a ceremony at JEC EUROPE in Paris, the world's most important trade fair for the composites industry. More than 100 projects from companies in 28 countries had applied: in the opinion of the jury, SAERTEX and its project partners developed an outstanding contribution to the automated production of rotor blades for wind turbines.

The mapretec research project, funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety and supervised by Project Management Jülich (PTJ), was launched a good four years ago: the aim of the research was to make the production of rotor blades faster and more cost-effective with the help of new manufacturing systems and adapted multiaxial fabrics (NCFs). The three partners - the Institute for Integrated Product Development (BIK) in the Department of Production Engineering at the University of Bremen, AREVA Blades GmbH (Stade) and SAERTEX - are now delighted to have received the internationally renowned award for their work.

Rotor blades, especially for offshore wind turbines, are usually more than 60 meters long and are mainly made of continuous fibre-reinforced materials. Large-area glass and carbon fiber layers must be layered on top of each other without wrinkles, formed into a shape and then bonded with synthetic resin. The crux of the matter is the draping of the fabrics: this is still mainly done manually and is very time-consuming. Automation processes should save time and costs here in the future.

The recently awarded mapretec joint project combined the expertise of all partners involved in the process. The user (here: AREVA Blades), production specialist (BIK) and material specialist (SAERTEX) pursued a holistic approach and jointly developed a system solution with automated cutting, depositing and preforming to adapt the carbon or glass fiber fabric to the design. Supported by sensors, computers first control the cutting of the fabrics. They are then automatically formed into the desired shape on a special, newly developed forming field (preforming). In the project, SAERTEX engineers ensured the necessary modification of the textile to meet the requirements of the automation technology. This was the only way to enable crease-free placement, forming and precise adaptation to the contour. All SAERTEX customers who want to further automate their processes will benefit from this knowledge in the future.

SAERTEX Managing Director Bruno Lammers is proud of the award and knows who he has to thank: "The entire project team has done a great job and truly deserves this award. Through the project, we have built up important know-how to support our customers in automating their processes with the right material. We are convinced that this development is forward-looking for SAERTEX and the entire composites industry."