World first from SAERTEX® : Automated quality inspection for carbon fabrics
Saertex presented a unique process innovation for its multi-axial high-end carbon fiber fabrics at JEC WORLD 2018 in Paris: the SAERTEX Smart Defect Control for the improved quality of Saertex carbon fiber materials.
Surface damage was already easy to identify in the past. However, the SAERTEX Smart Defect Control System looks inside the fabric, searching for gaps, bends or other damage. This globally unique process makes it possible to check carbon fabrics at Saertex automatically, continuously and without destroying them. Directly during production, Saertex carbon fiber fabrics are subjected to a quality control that meets the high requirements of aerospace or demanding industrial applications.
Multiaxial reinforcement materials are quasi-isoptropic textile constructions consisting of several unidirectional layers that are placed on top of each other in different orientations and sewn together. The more demanding the application for these materials, the more important it is to avoid even minor defects in the textile structure. The quality control of the materials currently involves many manual and complex work steps. This costs so much time and manpower that the industry has been trying for many years to develop an automated process for the flawless production of composite materials.
Saertex and its partners have now taken an important step on the way to defect-free materials: "Saertex Smart Defect Control means achieving a new level of quality for multiaxial fabrics. The intelligent combination of production and digitalization technologies with our material know-how made this innovation possible," explains Saertex Chief Technology Officer Dietmar Möcke. "We use the new smart quality control in the production of three- and four-layer Saertex carbon fabrics and can currently detect gaps as small as 2 mm. The results are constantly improving thanks to our development work," says Möcke.
In addition to gaps between the fiber strands, other defects such as ondulations in the inner layers of the multiaxial fabric can also be clearly identified and documented. "The reliable quality provided by Smart Defect Control will enable triaxial and quadraxial fabrics to achieve a breakthrough in many carbon applications. They can be an attractive alternative to the previously used two-layer biax materials. Smart Defect Control also helps us to react quickly, learn from defects and thus continuously improve our quality," Dietmar Möcke continues.
Customers can significantly simplify the handling and draping of composite materials in their component molds and avoid errors by using multilayer, multiaxial fabrics. With carbon fabrics that have been tested using the Smart Defect Control process, component manufacturers also save time in their own testing and processing of the carbon reinforcement materials due to the defect areas removed or marked by SAERTEX.
"Our customer Airbus is already using our materials tested with this new process in series production. The feedback has been very positive," reveals Saertex Sales Director Christoph Geyer. "At JEC WORLD 2018 in Paris, the SAERTEX Smart Defect Control was one of our highlights and we already met with great interest from users in the aviation, medical technology and automotive sectors during the trade fair."
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