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1Composites Manufacturing

ManufacturingComposites January/February 2012

The Official Magazine of the American Composites Manufacturers Association

Welcome to the COMpOsiTes 2012 show issue see our show Guide on page 18

Defining Green .................................................................15Focused on Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), ACMA’s Green Composites Committee has been helping the composites industry understand, compile and report critical, missing information needed to make a credible green case for composites. By John Busel, Gary Jakubcin,David J. Lipiro and Cheryl Richards

state of the industry ............................................................ 27Staying alive and profitable in a V-shaped business cycle has been challenging for most companies in the composites industry. Survivors, take a well-deserved deep breath as indicators suggest the worst is behind you. By Ray MacNeil

Taking Art to the streets ...................................................32Artist Walter Geiger built functional sculptures to inspire Orlando citizens in his composite outdoor bus stop exhibit. His collection, named the Cascade series, provides color and cooling to public transportation. By Angie McPherson

structure, sport and style ................................................34Recent advances with short fiber technology have led to innovative composite implementations in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Callaway Golf RAZR driver and the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento. By Angie McPherson

Cover photo courtesy of NASCAR/Getty Images

industry segmentsAutomotive ..............................4NASCARInfrastructure ...........................8Seal ObservatoryMarine ..................................... 10Military TechnologySports & Recreation .............. 12X-Games

Departments & ColumnsPresident’s Message ...............2Inside ACMA ......................... 38Ad Index ................................. 39Marketplace ........................... 39Postcure Chatter .................... 44

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Online Exclusives www.compositesmanufacturingblog.com

Features

Composites are everywhere. So is Composites Manufacturing. Visit www.compositesmanufacturingblog.com for exclusive content, including Q&As with industry leaders, new product round-ups and up-to-date news. Beyond the University GateOur September/October issue featured research projects underway at universities worldwide. We also received an update on a 2010 project, the bike-manufacturing IsoTruss technology. Catch up with BYU alumnus and IsoTruss manufacturer Altus Poles CEO Mark Jensen to see what successes a year can bring. In the News Composites Manufacturing magazine highlights industry breaking news and delivers it daily straight to you. Q&A InterviewsRead what leaders of Altaeros, Recreational Boat Group, the National Science Engineering Research Chair and more view as the strengths, weaknesses, areas of growth potential and factors affecting the composites industry.

Correction: In the article “Battlefield Ready” (p 27) of our Nov/Dec issue, Goodrich was credited for creating submarine components for over 35 years and for manufacturing the new Virginia-class submarines using the patented RHO-COR technology. Goodrich has only been making submarine sonar domes since 2002 and uses RHO-COR in sonar domes for frigates and destroyers without fire resistant materials. For more information, visit Goodrich.com.

2 Composites Manufacturing

American Composites Manufacturers Association3033 Wilson Blvd., Suite 420Arlington, Va 22201Phone: 703-525-0511 Fax: 703-525-0743Auto attendant: 703-525-0659Email: [email protected] Online: www.acmanet.org

Composites Manufacturing (ISSN 1084-841X) is published bi-monthly by the American Composites Manufacturers Association (ACMA), 3033 Wilson Blvd., Suite 420, Arlington, Va 22201 USA. Subscription rates: Free for members and non-members in the U.S., Canada and Mexico; $85 for international non-members. A free online subscription is available at cmmagazine.org. Pe-riodical postage paid at Arlington, VA and additional mail offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Composites Manufacturing, P.O. Box 336, Congers, NY 10920. The magazine is mailed to ACMA members and is also available by subscription. Canada Agreement number: PM40063731

Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to: Station A, PO Box 54, Windsor, ON N9A 6J5, Email: [email protected]. Copyright© 2012 by the ACMA. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted without permission from the publisher. The ACMA, a nonprofit organization representing the composites industry worldwide, publishes Composites Manufactur-ing, circulation 10,000, as a service to its members and other subscribers. The reader should note that opinions or statements of authors and advertisers appearing in Composites Manufacturing are their own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of statements of the ACMA, its Board of Directors or ACMA staff.

Official Magazine of the American Composites Manufacturers Association

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Composites ManufacturingVolume 28 | Number 1 | January/February 2012

President’sMessage

Opportunities for Composites

Lori LuchakMiles Fiberglass & Composites, ACMA [email protected] M

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As we start the New Year I think, “What a great time to be in the composite industry!” There will be many new

advances in composite products developed around energy efficiency and more opportunities for expansion. For example, UPS trucks, U.S. streetcars, wind turbines and more. The growing demand for light weight, high strength-to-weight ratio and longevity make composites a great answer.

Here at Miles Fiberglass, we are currently developing a prototype electric car with an all-composite body shell. I know of a company in Hawaii developing composite sole inserts for shoes. Even wave energy buoys use composite materials for their non-corrosive properties in salt water.

However, more can be done to ensure that composites get their fair share of the market with competing materials. As an association, ACMA is supporting proposed legislation that would require life cycle costing for federally funded construction projects. The 599-page bill includes several provisions that will spur increased use of composites. Life Cycle Costs Analysis (LCCA) is a process for evaluating the total economic worth of a project by analyzing initial costs and discounting future costs. In the short term analysis composites are often more expensive compared to competing materials, but under LCCA, composites shine. Eliminating the “lowest cost only” factor from government selection bids will help composites compete on a more level playing field.

If you would like to get involved in this process, contact John Schweitzer, ACMA’s senior director of Government Affairs. John has been working diligently on this and other legislative matters. Many members have already encouraged their Congressmen (or Congressional representatives) to support this effort. Meanwhile John Busel, ACMA’s director of Composite Growth Initiative (CGI), has been gathering data in collaboration with the Federal Highway Administration and other agencies and universities to build the case of composites service life longevity and its cost effect on infrastructure.

The Senate Highway Bill is another of the many opportunities this industry has to increase the use of composites. Many of the CGI committees have been working tirelessly to develop codes and standards that will help architects specify composite materials. The Green Composite Committee is currently working on the Composites Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Project aimed at developing data for certain materials and manufacturing processes so that a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be readily conducted allowing manufacturers to compare composites to competing materials. To read more about it, turn to page 15 of this issue. If you want to be involved in this very important, ground breaking work or learn more about what is going on, visit www.acmanet.org or call them directly at 703-525-0511. Remember, we are a member driven organization and that means we need your help! If you’re not already a member of ACMA, join today.


IndustrySegments

Auto

The opening day for the 54th National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) season

is February 26, 2012 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona, Fla. Hundreds of thousands of viewers will pack into the 2.5 mile arena while millions more will tune in at home to watch 42 cars battle, crash and roar past the black and white checkered flag.

To an engineer, this sport may look a little different than to a NASCAR fan. For example, what are the different ways to make a stock car capable of producing 190-mph speeds? Exactly what types of materials and techniques are teams using to build a machine capable of withstanding hours of high-speed racing? The short answer is: Sheet metal, powerful engines and good tires. However, composites are slowly integrating into NASCAR manufacturing designs thanks to faster prototyping tools and more

engineers focusing on composite concepts in approved areas of the cars.

Race cars could employ expensive techniques to lightweight and design an impressive racing machine, but NASCAR is intent on keeping the cost down to allow small teams to compete in the growing sport. That’s not to say that composites have been opted out of the racing arena; composite parts are heavily integrated into the nose, tail, interior seats, dash panels, fan housing,

overflow tanks, mirrors and other non-structural components. Teams such as Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) have even brought composite manufacturing in-house to get concepts built on the car faster and increase the team’s competitive edge.

The Joe Gibbs engineering teamOn a tour of the JGR headquarters,

based in Charlotte, N.C., Technical Sponsorship and Marketing Director Mark Bringle showed Composites Manufacturing how 50 plus engineers, including a composites department, create parts for 11 racing teams. Bringle was previously in charge of the vehicle designs and has a background in manufacturing.

“Seeing the car on the track is one of my favorite parts of the job,” says Bringle. “It’s good to see something you’ve built on a worldwide arena.” Bringle reflects on the 2005 Sprint Cup Championship win as one of his favorite experiences with the company and mentions that Gibbs’ leadership is the driving force that pushes the entire organization to do its best.

JGR only recently brought its composite manufacturing in-house in early 2000 when the team realized the benefits of shorter and cheaper production time. “Everything I’ve learned about composites manufacturing I’ve done here with JGR,” says Engineer Mike Bright, one of the main composite engineers at the facility. “The learning curve for manufacturing was pretty steep. But after playing around with some of the composite prototypes, the team quickly saw the advantages of manufacturing its own composite parts.”

JGR uses both vacuum processes and hand lay-up on all of the parts it manufactures in-house. “We don’t have an autoclave, so we

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

JGR driver Denny Hamlin #11 and Kyle Busch #18 in track-ready, NAsCAR approved cars.

Opening day at Daytona international speedway.

Photo: NASC

AR/G

etty Images


outsource most of our ducting in order to manufacture those parts,” adds Bringle. For JGR, the benefit of using vacuum processes is that the expense for equipment is considerably lower. However, the surface quality is not as fine as the parts cured in an autoclave. Most of the composite parts were only recently implemented into NASCAR designs such as the dash board and the tank. The team has prototyped several designs to include composite parts to lightweight the car in NASCAR approved areas. The JGR team uses a variety of different building materials depending on the application, including composite prepegs, Kevlar and epoxy resins.

From concept to productionJGR recently invested in new

prototyping technology to get concept parts from the CAD into a plastic prototype part and finally into a shape for a mold. This way the engineers take less time per week to produce parts for 70 JGR

racecars. “We were having difficulty with tires blowing out during races and needed to find a way to cool the rubber. We concept designed a cooling duct to distribute air around the tires,” says Bright.

The prototype part is designed in the Fortus 3D computer software, and then a thermoplastic model is built in the machine in one day by layering the material one at a time to fit the design specifications. This new process significantly reduces the time from concept to prototype, enabling the team to get new designs to the cars before the next race. Once the part is installed on the vehicle and accepted, the machine builds a mold for the part so the designers can manufacture the part. “This is

probably the best example of how bringing composite manufacturing in-house has provided cost and time solutions for our design processes,” says Bringle.

The checkered flagAfter the parts are completed, they

are tested for strength and durability onsite. They are then attached onto the chassis. It takes eight days to put the entire car together and when we visited mid-November, the team was already building cars for February’s Daytona 500. After the car is built, it goes through a number of tests on and off the track to assess the wheel placement, shocks, springs, etc. It then goes to the officials to verify that the properties of the vehicle

• NASCAR started implementing composites into cars in the 1980s

• Officials do a “magnet test” to ensure parts are steel

• The nose and tail are the only approved composites body parts

• Aluminum and CFRP are the only two approved materials for racing seats

NASCAR Fast Facts

Kyle Busch’s pit crew fueling up his #18 Toyota Camry.


For more stories like this, visit compositesmanufacturingblog.com and search using keyword “racing.”

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meet NASCAR standards. Then it’s off to the races where the car goes through several tests on the track

to ensure that the parts won’t break during the race.

Most of the metal parts from

retired race cars are recycled in the back of the manufacturing facility and the composite parts are ground and thrown away. If a part is only slightly damaged, Bright will cut away the damaged part and patch it using wet lay-up. “None of the parts are structural, so we can just fix the part and reuse it in another car,” says Bright. After a crash at the racetrack (or during prototyping), composite and metal parts will travel to the failure lab at the JGR facility to test the durability of the product. “We’ll push a product until it breaks. This is how we know the threshold of a specific product,” says Bringle. Some of the retired cars are sold to fans in order to raise money and the team begins building again for the next race.

So, how are teams building speed-hungry, doorless, windowless cars? From scratch —building from the chassis up with a team of engineers following NASCAR standards and prototyping with new designs to help the cars perform better under high speeds. This February, in the midst of thousands of cheering NASCAR fans, it will be up to the driver, crew chief and pit crew to determine how the 190-mph mass of moving sheet metal, rubber, composites and all will cross the finish line.

Angie McPherson is the communications coordinator at ACMA. Email comments to [email protected].

Teams such as Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) have brought composite manufacturing in-house to get concepts built on the

car faster and increase the team’s competitive edge.

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Infrastructure

Cast Polymer

10 Composites Manufacturing Subscribe for free at cmmagazine.org

Nationwide housing starts rose for a third consecutivemonth in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of626,000 units, according to a report from the National As-sociation of Home Builders (NAHB) that relies on U.S.Commerce Department data. The report also indicates thatthe rate of permit issuance for new housing constructionrose by 7.5 percent in the month, to a seasonally adjustedannual rate of 685,000 units. But how is this affecting thecast polymer market, which relies heavily on the housingindustry for its business?

Composites Manufacturing talked to three manufacturerswho have experienced modest growth in their business.Southern Cultured Marble, Custom Marble Products andFormatop have seen increases ranging from 10 to 25 per-cent over the past two months.

So what’s accounting for this growth? According toMark Buehner, president of South Dakota-based For-matop, part of it may be psychology. “For too long, thenews was too negative, and the way people feel has astrong influence on their purchasing habits,” he says.Buehner hopes the positive news galvanizes spending.

However, these companies still can’t fully shake the re-ality of their situation. “I tend to disregard percentagesand focus on real numbers,” says Scott Bishop, vice presi-dent of South Carolina-based Southern Cultured Marble,Inc. “I think in this case, the percentage aspect is slightlymisleading. It’s a percentage of a much smaller number,

so the real growth isn’t as large as it would have been afew years ago.”

Todd Loebel, owner of Wisconsin-based Custom MarbleProducts, agrees, saying local homebuilders in the areawho were once building 70 to 80 homes per year nowstruggle to build about 15. “I view percentages with a grainof salt. Ten percent growth sounds good, until you realizethat because it comes from the lower number, you’re look-ing at essentially one extra home per year. That’s good, butnot anywhere close to what the typical levels would be,”he says.

Even with the modest increase in new housing over theprevious year, Bishop says the cost factor will continue toinhibit cultured marble. “The houses themselves are worthless, and feature less-expensive materials to match,” hesays. “Unfortunately for us, the price of the raw materialshasn’t dropped. In fact, they’ve only increased, so we’restill at their mercy.”

Though the housing levels continue to be a fraction ofwhat they were even a few years ago, these men say theindustry will continue to focus on innovations and devel-opments to make the recent growth even larger. “The in-dustry has to look at the aesthetics of the product. Forexample, color trends change much faster than what theyused to, so companies must always be thinking about whatthey can do to make things newer,” says Buehner.

IndustrySegments

Infrastructure/Construction

continued...

Percentages Can Be Misleading

The Role of Composites in Disaster ReliefWhen Haiti’s recent earthquakes leftresidents without shelter and ex-posed the need for better infrastruc-ture, one composites manufacturerfound a way to do good…and goodbusiness.

InnoVida manufactures compositepanels and assembles structures forhousing applications in the residen-tial and defense markets. The Miami-based company has pledged todonate 1,000 homes to Haitians. Theimplementation of such a large sam-ple of composite homes is a charita-ble act, but it will also demonstratethe role composites can play in reha-

InnoVida is donating 1,000 composite houses to the people of Haiti.NOAA Alaskan Seal Observatory

Saint Paul Island is located in the middle of the Bering Sea and is home to the largest

Northern Fur Seal breeding ground the in the world. American scientists have been conducting research at the site since 1911, counting the colony’s population and observing new-born seal behavior. To stay aloof from the marine mammals, scientists make their observations from a series of wooden planks connecting seven towers on a remote part of the island that is surrounded by rocks and ice. When the National Oceanic and At-mospheric Administration (NOAA) needed to replace the long-standing wooden observatory deck at a re-search facility in Saint Paul Island, Alaska, the U.S. government speci-fied pultruded composites as the material of choice.

The location of the observatory is difficult to reach via traditional methods like trucks and ships. Not

only would the building material need to be transportable, but contrac-tor Wade Perrow Construction LLC (WPC), Gig Harbor, Wash., needed materials that were strong enough to withstand the 20-60 mph winds and light enough to install with limited construction equipment. Chiefly, NOAA wanted to extend the obser-vatory lifespan. “NOAA specified composites to ensure the product life would reach 50 years,” says Jason Sousie, project manager at WPC.

This was the first project that Sousie constructed using FRP composite materials.

To research more about the ma-terial he would be working with, Sousie searched the Internet for “composite materials” and found Strongwell Corporation, Bristol, Va. “The small island population seldom uses heavy construction equipment and the installation was manhandled using a forklift and pulley system,” says Randy Montgomery, project manager at Strongwell who coor-dinated the material provided for the Seal Observation project. This required non-traditional planning from WPC to ensure project success with the available tools. Logistics continued to challenge Strongwell and WPC to complete the observa-tory before June and remain within the budget.

The Northern Fur Seal is an en-dangered species and the colony

NOAA specified composites to ensure the product life would

reach 50 years. -Jason Sousie

Project Manager, WPCSeattle, Wash.

IndustrySegments

Photos courtesy of Wade Perrow

Construction and Strongw

ell.


For more stories like this, visit compositesmanufacturingblog.com and search keyword “pultrusion.”

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occupies the island during the summer months, leaving only the winter available for construction. Therefore, the timeline for shipping the building materials to the island was imperative to the success of this project. “We put a lot of energy into the coordination of this project. Ev-erything they needed to complete the project had to ship on one boat to the island,” says Montgomery.

The composite handrails, platforms and ladders were manufactured in September and delivered to Wash-ington state via trucks by Novem-ber. The product departed Seattle Harbor on a 300-foot coastal boat to Saint Paul Island in December where WPC employees installed Strongwell pultruded composites in blizzard-like conditions during a four month timeframe. If the building materials missed the last western Alaskan boat to Saint Paul for the year, the team would have to hire a charter vessel, which costs upwards of $30,000.

“During transportation, some of the fiberglass parts were crushed in the shipping trucks. Fortunately, we were able to contact Montgomery at Strongwell and ordered extra spare parts. There aren’t any hardware stores on the island, we only had the tools we brought,” says Sousie. “I was really impressed with the level of responsiveness from Strongwell and the durability of the product. I know NOAA was extremely pleased with the outcome as well. If the right opportunity came up, I would defi-nitely work with the material again.”

The Alaskan Observatory Project was recently named the Best Federal Heavy Renovation Project of 2010 at the Aon Build America Awards in Las Vegas. The composite observa-tory provided NOAA and WPC with material more durable than wood, corrosion resistant and easy to install in the field. Montgomery predicts that the observatory will last much longer than the previous wood installation, based on his experience with current Strongwell products in the field, and looks forward to completing more

projects with unique composite appli-cations in the coming year.


®

ALL NEWDESIGN


Photos courtesy of Wade Perrow

Construction and Strongw

ell.


IndustrySegments

Marine

Technology Lowering More thanBoat Prices

In late 2008, Structural Composites based in Melbourne, Fla., submitted

a proposal to the Navy Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) to solve project number N091-049, Advanced Combatant Craft for Increased Afford-ability and Mission Performance. The purpose of the project was to reduce the lifecycle cost and improve shock mitigation protection on small combat-ant crafts in difficult environments.

Structural Composites was one of three teams accepted in Phase I, each was awarded $75,000. The company teamed with Zodiac Boats, an inflat-able and rigid-hull boat company based in Stephensville, Md., to help with the rigid boat design. The team completed Phase I in December 2009 and was the only team to pass into Phase II, where they were awarded $750,000. In Phase II of the project, Structural Composites will produce one low-risk, low-cost boat approxi-mately 21-feet long with the option to build another more advanced boat using higher quality fibers to improve shock mitigation, but also to further lightweight the boat design.

Elements of the Prisma Single Skin Technology (SST) were modeled off a similar single skin system that was used by Maverick Boats, Fort Pierce, Fla., and MasterCraft Boat Company,

Venore, Tenn., approximately five years ago to lightweight recreational boats, which offered a 10 percent weight reduction. “But the problem with the previous single skin system was that it wasted a lot of material,” says Lewit. “They were buying core kits, which are expensive due to core material cost and the volume lost during knitting.” The Prism SST Navy boats are sandwich-free de-signs where the hull, deck, and even the transom is a single skin construc-tion.

The laminates are manufactured using resin infusion on Prisma pre-forms created at Structural Compos-ite’s manufacturing sister company CompSys, also in Melbourne, Fla. The company can manufacture one mile of beams in four hours, this reduces the labor cost and ensures ample supply.


Lewit believes the composite skin technology can impact the future of the marine industry by reduc-ing weight and labor cost using preforms for both open mold and vacuum assisted resin transfer mold-ing (VARTM). The thin, single-skin membrane uses significantly less material and could bring the cost of boats down for the marine industry. “In 2006 we were able to make a $32,000 boat cost $25,000. But that was five years ago; imagine what we could do with this new technology,” says Lewit.

Lewit recently received a Congres-sional Medal of Merit for developing this new technology in partnership with the U.S. Navy. His company is focused on bringing this military technology back to the marine indus-try. He believes that applying Prisma SST technology on recreational boats could significantly reduce the weight and price, which could be an impor-

tant step for the industry. “If you start building flatter bottom boats and suspend the cockpit, you can change the hydrodynamics of the boat to the point where you can put a smaller engine on it,” says Lewit. “That starts a spiral towards fuel-efficiency and overall cost-savings. Put in a smaller engine, smaller fuel tank, pull an axel of the trailer, drop horsepower, you’re looking at po-tentially 40-50 percent savings in the price of the boat, making them af-fordable again.”

Additionally, Lewit and his team are working with the Florida DOT to implement composite material into movable bridge decks, a huge need in the state. “We have a coalition of boat builders that are interested in producing bridge decks. There are a lot of people out of work and there are over 150,000 structurally defi-cient bridges in the U.S.,” says Lewit. “This could be a good area for the

industry to move towards, particu-larly the boating industry. Especially since I don’t see the marine market going back to where it was and the boat industry is well suited to bridge deck technology.” While the boat and aerospace industry remain somewhat stagnate in Florida, Struc-tural Composites continues to move forward into a rich and rewarding new realm for composite innovation, using its new Prisma SST technology to lower weight and cost.


For more stories like this, visit compositesmanufacturingblog.com and search keyword “reduction.”

MC

ACMA: Your Education Connection2012 Events Calendar

February 21-23 COMPOSITES 2012, Las Vegas, NV

May 8 - 9 CCT Instructors Course, Arlington, VA

May 16 - 17 Composites Build America Lobby Day, Washington, DC

May 23-24 Chemical Processing Workshop, Houston, TX

June 19-20 Green Composites Workshop, Chicago, IL(tentative)

October 9 -10 CCT Instructors Course, Arlington, VA

Unless otherwise noted, all events are open to members and nonmembers.

For more information, visit www.acmanet.org/meetings


IndustrySegments

Sports/Recreation

Composites Aid in Aquatic ManeuverabilitySports/Recreation

Rodrigo Silveira has been designingcustom jet skis for the past eight years.Now, he’s branching out and usingcomposites to make his own line of per-sonal watercraft.

Silveira’s company, Silveira Group,has developed the Samba XRS, a water-craft made largely from carbon fiber. Sil-veira notes the composite material isexactly what he needed to achieve hismain goal: maneuverability. “Personalwatercrafts are getting bigger, and are more about goingfrom point A to B. If you want maneuverability, it’s tougherto achieve with big watercraft,” he says. “You see a lot ofriders trying to do stunts or tricks, but because of their mas-sive weight, the rider doesn’t have the control they need.Having a machine that is so small and so lightweight givesthe rider more instinctive body control.”

Carbon fiber has helped achieve that control and as aresult, the XRS comes in at about 34 pounds. “We wantedthe rider to really have the most control of the machine,and we knew we had to make it as light as we could to dothat. That’s why we turned to making it out of carbonfiber,” Silveira says.

This includes implementing the high-strength compos-ite into unusual parts. The ride plate, which is the equiv-alent of an automotive chassis, is usually made fromaluminum. Silveira cites the increased costs of mass pro-duction with carbon fiber have been the main reason forthis, and he hopes this is one way to buck the trend.

The manufacturing process begins with creating a 3Dmodel, then a wet lay-up for the mold. For the part itself,the company used prepreg and five layers of carbon fibermaterial, which Silveira says makes for a straightforward,easy lay-up. The mold is then heated in an autoclave forabout an hour at 180 degrees and another hour at 250 de-grees to cure it. “The first hour is used to soften the resinso it will flow into the right places in the material. The sec-ond hour is curing that resin,” Silveira says.

After the initial two hours has passed, the finished partcan be pulled from the mold. The company uses two au-toclaves for this process. A 10-ft. diameter model is usedfor the larger parts and a 5-ft. diameter model is used forsmaller parts such as hood components and plates.

Silveira credits his background as a 3D designer for asmooth manufacturing process, which was accomplishedby designing a model in 3D and extracting the patternsfrom that model in the CNC routing process. “Tradition-ally, you have people drawing out and manually cuttingpatterns for the lay-up. We streamlined this process which

resulted in prototyping a new machine from start to fin-ish in about two weeks,” he says.

Doing all the work in-house has also aided the stream-lining process. “From the design to the routing to the fabriccutting to the mold-making in the actual part being made,doing everything in-house really does make the processquicker,” says Silveira. Though this current edition of theXRS is gas-powered, the company also hopes to make asplash with an electric-powered version this fall.

The Samba XRS is the work of designer-turned-manufacturer Rodrigo Silveira.

17Subscribe for free at cmmagazine.org Composites Manufacturing

Uphill Progress for Downhill Sports

Competitive snowboarders rely on a slim piece of fiberglass and some plastic

strapping to ride down the sleek, often precarious slopes like the Colorado Rocky Mountains. In stiff competition, snowboarders must trust the equipment they bring to the slopes to keep from breaking in harsh conditions. Especially when the boards are tested in extreme conditions like the high intensity rides, the Superpipe, BigAir and Snowboarding X events, during the ESPN Winter X-Games. This year’s events will take place in Aspen, Colo., January 26-29, 2012, and new snowboard advances, thanks to composites, are expected to raise the level of competition.

K2 Sports based in Seattle has been engineering snow skis with composite materials since the company was founded 50

years ago in November 1961. Bill Kirshner is the original founder of the company and a pioneer in the market for fiberglass manufacturing in winter sports equipment. Previous to his work in the 1960’s, most ski manufacturers were making components out of wood or metal. Kirshner, a

K2 snowboards manufactures thousands of quality snowboards featuring top-of-the-line technology developed at their new research facility.

manufacturer of fiberglass cages, knew that composites would be the future of winter sports equipment design because the use of fiberglass could prevent wood rot and other corrosion issues associated with traditional winter gear.

Today, K2 Snowboards, a branch of K2 Sports exclusively focused

Not Off Your RockerK2 has one snowboard team member potentially competing in the Women’s Superpipe at the 2012 Winter X-Games, Gretchen Bleiler, who has won four gold medals at the Winter X-Games and silver in the Winter Olympics. Bleiler uses the K2 Eco Pop 152, a lighter board construction she helped design and promote in 2010. It is built for women snowboarders and now the rocker, a snowboard shaped with a small upward curve rather than the traditional camber design, is for all terrains.

Doug Sanders, global product director of snowboards at K2, believes that the recent industry trend towards more rocker shaped snowboards is a result of the R&D efforts from the research facility developing the rocker design. “We’ve made tons of ineffectual snowboards at K2 to develop our rocker boards but they never make it to the customer. All of our advances come from concepts that occur when you experiment,” he says. He expects that the future will bring more advances for the rocker design, which has only recently gripped the industry, and more interesting competition thanks to the advances of snowboard engineering.

Olympic medalist Gretchen Bleiler on her

award winning board, the K2 eco pop.


on manufacturing composite snowboards, still uses hand lay-up to handcraft high-performance winter sporting equipment. It stays ahead of the curve by investing in snowboard technology research and development at a state-of-the-art facility capable of building 100 percent production level snowboards in four business days. “We can concept a design on Monday, have the board ready on Thursday, test it out on Friday and potentially tweak it on Monday if we want to,” says Doug Sanders, global product director of snowboards at K2.

K2 manufactures thousands of snowboards a year and prototypes approximately 200 boards. “That mathematically works out to be about one board a day that we mold to ride, break and make it better,”

says Sanders. “When it comes to manufacturing snowboards, there’s only so much engineering you can design in the board before you have to just go out and test it. Our research facility gives us that opportunity.” Some of the low end snowboards have started to implement closed molding technology like compression molding on preforms to increase the production speed, but hand lay-up is a must for the high performance boards. “In composites, you can’t just have all hard structural layers,

you need sheer layers to allow the product to flex and stay together under the enormous stresses our products go through; especially since we have to perform at cold temperatures. A lot of little components need to be put into the board and the only way to do that is with a skilled craftsman and not an assembly line. It’s the only way to get the quality we want,” says Sanders.

The snowboard team sponsored by K2 is used as a research group to develop competitive snowboards

The flatline rocker, a flattened rocker arch, uses hybrilight technology to minimize material during construction.


for their personal use. The athletes typically use the boards they help to develop during competitions. One composite component that has recently undergone considerable amounts of testing is the material used in snowboard cores. In high-performance snowboards, K2 uses a mixture of different woods and bamboo to strengthen the board. “We use three different trees in the core to increase strength and durability on the outsides and down the center of the board. Then we mix in some bamboo for flexibility and strength,” says Sanders. Just this year, K2 developed a board using a laminated bamboo wood core that has been termed “unbreakable.” The snowboard has gone through multiple extreme tests and riders and has never broken. Bamboo is not the lightest of woods but it is easily available for snowboard construction. “Bamboo has huge weight to strength properties. In Asia people are using it to build scaffolding.” says Sanders.

The recent downhill economy has not impacted the popular downhill sport manufacturer. “We took the opportunity to capitalize on research and development opportunities at the height of the U.S. economic depression. We saw the dip coming but we didn’t take our foot off the pedal,” says Sanders. “Our new designs started coming out around that time. The entire time I’ve been involved in the snowboard industry I’ve never seen new technology move faster than it is now. It feels like it’s the first five years that snowboarding ever existed. Honestly, if you have a board older than three years, you’re riding old technology.”


For more stories like this, visit compositesmanufacturingblog.com and search using keyword “sports.”

MC

Take your CCT exam at the show!

February 23, 2012You must be enrolled in the CCT program and registered for

COMPOSITES 2012 to take the exam.

Register for the examsession by

January 28, 2012.

Don’t miss this once-a-year opportunity!Increase productivity. Reduce production cost.

Enhance product quality.

FREE CCT Tutorials Offered at COMPOSITES 2012!

Las Vegas ■ February 21, 2012

To sign up or for more information, please contact [email protected] or call 703-525-0511

Space is limited.

Register at www.acmashow.org

Come to ACMA’s booth #665 at COMPOSITES 2012 and receive a 10% discount when you sign up for other CCT programs (both individual and group enrollments).

When you attend COMPOSITES, you can participate in these full-length CCT tutorials FREE

Open Molding

Wind Blade Repair

Vacuum Infusion

inside the K2 research facility, an employee removes excess material from a prototype board.


What is the environmental footprint of my products? How green or sustainable

are they relative to competing prod-ucts made of different materials? What information is out there for my company to use? How do I develop quantifiable data to support my claim? As the composites industry works to meet the needs of a world that is more environmentally aware, these and many other questions are being asked by composites manufac-turers each day.

These questions have been largely answered in many applications for competing materials such as steel, wood and aluminum, but the same cannot be said for composites. How-ever, that is about to change. Since 2009, ACMA’s Green Composites Committee (GCC) has been helping the composites industry understand, compile and report the critical missing information needed to make a cred-ible green case for composites. That missing information comprises the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) for com-posites.

What is Life Cycle Inventory?There are environmentally im-

portant inputs (e.g., energy, water, materials and other resources) and outputs (e.g., discharges to air, land and water) at every step of the life cycle of a product.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the formal method by which the en-vironmental life cycle impacts of a product are compiled and evaluated. An LCI is the front-end phase of

LCA involving the compilation and quantification of inputs and outputs, for a given product system through-out its life cycle. Once LCI data is available, an LCA can be conducted on products using the materials and processes covered in a national LCI database, maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Re-newable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The NREL LCI database includes in-formation on materials such as steel,

DefiningGreen

An update on the Composites

LCI project

By John Busel, Gary Jakubcin, David J. Lipiro and

Cheryl Richards

INPUT

Materials

Energy

Water

Other Resources

Raw Material Acquisition

Production

Use/Reuse/Maintenance

Recycle/WasteManagement

Air Emissions

Wastewater Discharges

Solid/Hazardous Waste

Coproducts/Byproducts

OUTPUT“CRADLE”

“GRAVE”

Figure 1: Generalized Product Life Cycle

Legislative andRegulatory


aluminum, concrete and wood, but very little on composites. Without readily available LCI data, LCAs on composite products will be very dif-ficult and costly to conduct.

The GCC is addressing this by developing the missing LCI data. In June 2011, at the ACMA’s Inau-gural Green Composites Workshop in Chicago, the GCC launched the Composites LCI Project. ACMA se-lected Franklin Associates, a Division of Eastern Research Group Inc., to help conduct this important project. Franklin Associates has more than 35 years of experience conducting LCAs for private companies and industry associations and has completed nu-merous material LCAs and submit-ted LCI process data modules for fuels, plastics and other materials to the U.S. LCI Database.

The nuts and boltsIn the composites industry, there

are thousands of composites materi-als and more than a dozen manu-facturing processes. Developing LCI data for all these materials and pro-cesses is a daunting prospect. The GCC decided to maximize value by focusing the Composites LCI Project on the most commonly used materi-als and manufacturing processes. Further, the project was divided into three separate tasks of collecting/compiling fundamental data, devel-oping a report and developing NREL LCI templates that will be used to submit the final data into the registry.

To begin, the Committee agreed in Phase 1 to evaluate two materials, un-saturated polyester resin and E-glass reinforcement materials, and five processes, open molding, compres-sion molding, casting-open molding, vacuum infusion processing and sec-ondary bonding processes. Originally, pultrusion was on the Phase 1 list; however, evaluation was completed separately under the leadership of Dr. Michael Lepech at Stanford Uni-versity and funded by the National

Science Foundation. Future phases are planned and will include other materials and processes, but are de-pendent on company participation in supporting the required materials and processes, as well as funding.

In total, 25 ACMA corporate mem-bers have volunteered to work with Franklin Associates to collect the nec-essary information. These companies have been working for more than three months collecting the raw data that were needed to comprehensively complete the project task, including general information, material inputs/outputs, water use/consumption, energy use, solid waste and air/water emissions. The shared data was con-fidentially analyzed and averaged by Franklin Associates, generating repre-sentative information for each mate-rial and manufacturing process that will be shared with the industry.

Overall, the two main objectives of Phase 1 are to provide individual ACMA members with LCI data on the materials and composite produc-tion processes that are specific to their operations for internal benchmarking and decision-making, and to provide ACMA as a whole with aggregated LCI data representative of the average production on those same materials and processes in a format suitable for submission to the U.S. Department of Energy NREL’s LCI database. This information will be used by public and private stakeholders in preparing LCAs.

Not an easy task by any means, but the results will greatly benefit the industry, especially participating companies. Not only will these 25 companies be able to gauge how their materials and processes compare to the aggregated (averaged) data, but their participation provides them the opportunity to take a close look at their manufacturing process flow, the decisions they make and the waste they produce. This top-to-bottom, in-depth review can help them redefine their business and marketing plans, identify ways to gain production sav-ings, and better comply with environ-mental regulations.

LCI Project by Company ParticipationUP Resin Task Grp

AOC, LLC

Ashland Performance Materials

CCP Composites

Interplastic Corporation

PCCR USA, Inc.

Reichhold, Inc.

E-Glass Fiber Reinforcement Task Grp

Johns Manville

Owens Corning

PPG Industries, Inc.

Open Molding Task Grp

Alaglass Pools

Best Bath Systems

Ershigs, Inc.

Lifestyle, LLC

Xerxes Corporation

Compression Molding Task Grp

Mar-Bal, Inc.

MFG Tray Company

Molded Fiber Glass - North Carolina

Premix Inc.

Stahlin Enclosures

Vacuum Infusion Processing Task Grp

Ershigs, Inc.

Fiber-Tech Industries, Inc.

Plasti-Fab, Inc

Casting – Open/Closed Mold Task Grp

Bradley Corporation

Classic Cultured Marble

Hoffman Fixtures Company

International Marble Industries, Inc.

Secondary Bonding Task Grp

Ershigs, Inc.

Molded Fiber Glass Companies

Stahlin Enclosures

The Next StepsThe GCC is committed to provid-

ing ACMA members with the most transparent LCI data available for the materials and processes under study.


At COMPOSITES 2012 in Las Vegas, an educational session titled, “Big Steps Towards a Small Footprint – Devel-opment of Life Cycle Inventory Data for U.S. Composites” will be presented by Melissa Huff, senior chemical Engi-neer and project manager at Franklin Associates. The presentation will focus on the process to develop the data and the results of this project in-cluding the data submitted to the U.S. LCI Database.

As previously mentioned, a pri-mary objective of the Composites LCI Project is to enable companies to conduct—at a relatively manageable expense—green product comparisons via the formal methodology of LCA. The GCC will carefully evaluate the many products and markets served by composites and select a few prod-ucts as a test case for a comparative LCA. From those comparisons, we will finally understand and be able to quantitatively document the sus-tainability of composites relative to competing materials. However, this

Take a Vested InterestThe LCI Project is a complex under-taking that requires qualified LCA/LCI experts to successfully complete. This could not happen without fund-ing. In addition to ACMA, the follow-ing composites industry leaders have provided critical funds to execute Phase 1 of this project:

• AOC, LLC

• Ashland Performance Materials

• CCP Composites

• Interplastic Corporation

• PCCR USA, Inc.

• Reichhold, Inc.

• Ershigs, Inc.

The entire composites industry has a vested interest in this work and its results. There is more work to do be-yond Phase 1 and we ask that many more companies commit to becom-ing involved and support this critical industry endeavor.

process needs to be repeated with many products in different markets. The Committee expects manufactur-ers of composites products will con-duct individual LCAs modeled on this test case on their own and at their expense to determine how well their products stack up environmentally against the competition. None of this would be feasible without a solid foundation – the Composites LCI Project.

John Busel is the project principal investigator and director, Composites Growth Initiative at ACMA. Gary Jakubcin is the co-chair of the GCC LCI Subcommittee and manager Green Products and Life Cycle Assessment at Owens Corning-Corporate Sustainability. David J. Lipiro is the co-chair of the GCC LCI Subcommittee and president of ECRM, Inc. Cheryl Richards is the chairperson of the ACMA GCC and global market development manager of wind energy at PPG Industries Inc.

Who is a leader in the composites industry? Whose accomplishments do you most admire?

is recognizing the Industry’s

Top choices will be featured in our July/August issue

Whether an up-and-comer

or an established leader,

share your pick with CM!

Nominations will begin at

COMPOSITES 2012

Won’t be at COMPOSITES? Make your BEST choice known online at:

www.compositesmanufacturingblog.com

BEST

Visit us in the ACMA booth #665 to cast your vote

BRIG

HT E

NERGETIC SKILLED TRAILBLAZERS


Join us for COMPOSITES 2012 in person or online. This year there will be several ways to get up-to-the-minute news, schedul-ing and read the latest stories on COMPOSITES 2012.

Once again, Composites Manufacturing will be the official Show Blog. Go online to compositesmanufacturingblog.com, where you’ll find speaker interviews, news, event information and up-to-the minute educational session wrap-ups.

Follow us on Twitter! @cmmagazine

We’ll be tweeting breaking news, schedule changes, raffle prizes, show floor news and more. Is there a session you

really liked or a networking event you enjoyed? Tweet about it using #COMPOSITES2012.

Available throughout the convention center, Composites Manufacturing is providing COM-POSITES attendees with a Show Daily. Each morning pick up a copy, which will include Schedule-at-a-Glance, the day’s Can’t-Miss spots, and a recap of the day’s top sessions and speakers.

On Facebook, we’ll post daily photos and top stories. Con-sider it a Daily Digest for Facebook lovers.

Follow our COMPOSITES LinkedIn group for discussions and show updates.

Show Daily

In front of John Hoskinson, people walked up on a stage and talked about their new projects and discoveries. Somewhere behind him, the folks from Composites One worked on closed mold work cells live on the floor, separated from the crowd by little more than a makeshift viewing wall.

Hoskinson leaned back in his seat, his nine ribbons cascading down his chest, from his badge to his belt buckle.

“I wanted to see what’s happening in the marketplace,” said Hoskinson, president and CEO of Gruber Systems Inc., Valencia, Calif. “This is a good place to come to get a flavor

Official Magazine of the American Composites Manufacturers Association

brought to you by

The official

Attendees Find Solutions on Show Floor

1

FEBRUARY 4, 2011

Renowned futurist Daniel Burrus encouraged attendees of the General Session to set aside the standard “I’m too busy” excuse and help shape the future. “We are at the base of a mountain of not just change, but transformation,” said Burrus, founder and CEO of Burrus Research and author of the best-seller Technotrends. “There’s more opportunity in the composites market than at any other time. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

In his presentation “Using Innovation and Trends to Drive Growth,” sponsored by Owens Corning, Burrus stressed the importance of focusing on “the visible future”—trends you know will happen. “In a world of uncertainty, start with certainty,” he said. “What am I certain about?”

As an example, he talked about demographics. The U.S. has 78 million Baby Boomers, and people over 55 years

continued on page 2

Futurist: Vision and Collaboration Will Shape Futureold control 80 percent of the wealth. As they hit retirement, where will they spend their money and how can your company capitalize on this? Perhaps you can build easy-launch trailers for boats to make them more accessible for older people.

Another area of certainty is technology. There will be more processing power, storage and bandwidth that will accelerate change. They will “transform how we sell, market, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train and educate,” said Burrus. One idea he gave for harnessing the power of technology is to make smart composites. Imagine the possibilities of adding a sensor to composite materials so you know when they chip or crack?

“You and I can invent the future right now,” said Burrus. But he added that you can’t do it alone. It will require teamwork from all generations—the young techies in your company and the experienced vanguard. “We need to collaborate in this industry—manufacturers, distributors and suppliers.”

Burrus ended his presentation with a challenge to the audience: “Spend at least one hour a week where you unplug from the present and plug into the future. I think your business will take off.”

Stay Posted on the Go with Inside Reporting

Before, during and after the show, Composites Manufacturing editors and writers will post interviews with education presenters, exhibitors and attendees at www.compositesmanufacturingblog.com. Or follow the conversation on Twitter @cmmagazine.

of what other opportunities are out there and, at the same time, what’s happening in the market we’re serving.”

continued on page 2

Opening Welcome Reception on Tuesday at 5:00 pmAwards Luncheon on Wednesday at 12:00 pm

Specialized Networking Sessions on Wednesday at 5:00 pm

Get Involved In Person and Online

Network Your Way to Success

CoMPoSItES2012

Network Your Way to Success

EXHIBITS | DEMONSTRATIONS

EDUCATION | NETWORKING

BUSINESS MEETINGS | AWARDS

SHOWCASE | PRODUCT LAUNCHES

ARCHITECTURAL | AEROSPACE

AUTOMOTIVE | BATH

BUILDING/CONSTRUCTION | CORROSION

POWER GENERATION | KITCHEN

MARINE | MASS TRANSPORTATION

MILITARY | SPORTS & LEISURE

TRUCK & RV

FABRICATORS/MANUFACTURERS

END USERS | SUPPLIERS

DISTRIBUTORS | GOVERNMENT

UNIVERSITIES | MILITARY

www.acmashow.org

Choose THE COMPOSITES opportunity.

REGISTER NOW.

“COMPOSITES is the only show where you can see the latest technology,

meet industry experts and network with your peers to make your business stronger.”

— 2011 Attendee

It’s All About Tomorrow’s BusinessCOMPOSITES 2012 is a diverse forum providing one-stop access to experts, vendors and innovations from all segments of the industry – an unparalleled opportunity to network with and learn from the best in the business. This is your event, with a 30+ year track record of results, backed by the industry’s association. Attend COMPOSITES and you’ll understand why decades of experience delivers positive results.

ACMA CM 8pgs insert.indd 1 12/19/11 9:15 PM

COMPOSITES 2012: February 21-23, 2012 • Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV For a current list of exhibitors, program information and to register, visit: www.acmashow.org

It’s All About Tomorrow’s Business COMPOSITES 2012 provides all the tools you need to stay competitive in current markets and take advantage of emerging ones. You’ll fi nd everything from basic materials and processes to cutting edge, high-tech products and equipment, as well as an unmatched selection of educational presentations and hands-on demonstrations. The emphasis is on real-life applications that will help build your business and enhance your bottom-line.

Unparalleled Opportunities

COMPOSITES Opportunity: World-Class LearningKey industry professionals and expert speakers from around the globe offer information and insights on a broad range of topics. Whether you’re new to the industry or a seasoned professional, there’s something for you!

General sessions are open to all attendees and exhibitors

Tuesday, February 21NASCAR legend and ABC/ESPN commentator Rusty Wallace is in the keynote spotlight, sharing his compelling perspectives on teamwork, high performance achievement and composites in racing.

Wednesday, February 22Composites on the move! A distinguished panel focuses on transportation trends and technologies and what developments in this dynamic sector mean for our industry.

■ More than 100 peer-reviewed technical papers and education breakout sessions – developed by ACMA, SAMPE and SPE.

■ In-depth sessions on green composites, materials, manufacturing, design and engineering, innovation, regulation and legislation, traditional and emerging markets plus business strategy and operations.

■ Special sessions on the latest information pertaining to styrene and what this means for your business.

■ Free CCT (Certifi ed Composites Technician) Tutorials on VIP, Open Molding and Wind Blade Repair.

COMPOSITES Opportunity: ConnectionsThe industry’s premier event provides plenty of time to network with the best in the composites business – including your colleagues, customers and competitors.

■ Enjoy some Vegas-style excitement at the not-to-be missed Opening Welcome Reception.

Sponsored by

■ Celebrate industry achievements at the Awards Luncheon and recognize the ACE (Awards in Composites Excellence) Competition winners.

Sponsored by

■ Take advantage of Specialized Networking Receptions for the following areas: Emerging Markets; Pultrusion; Corrosion/Construction/Architecture; High Performance; International and ICPA (Cast Polymer).

Sponsored by

COMPOSITES Opportunity: Exhibits, Demonstrations and DisplaysWith the broadest range of composites industry companies coming together in one location at one time, the COMPOSITES exhibit hall is the best place to fi nd the newest innovations, products and services in 2012.

Don’t miss:■ Over 220 exhibitors.■ Special pavilions for Adhesives and Sealants,

International (Europe and China), University and First-Time exhibitors.

■ Real-time manufacturing demos on the Show Floor.■ ACE and Pinnacle Competition Showcase highlighting

market potential, innovation and creativity.■ Increased education on the Innovation Stage – hear from

ACE and Pinnacle Award submitters and exhibitors.■ Exciting product/service announcements and launches

from leading companies.■ A fabulous closing raffl e valued at more than $5,000.

Sponsored by

Schedule-at-a-Glance


Tuesday, February 21, 20129:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Education Sessions and Technical Papers

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

University Poster Session

1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

General Session – Open to All

3:00 PM – 4:55 PM


5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

Opening Welcome Reception

Sponsored by

Wednesday, February 22, 20128:00 AM – 9:15 AM

General Session – Open To All

9:30 AM – 5:30 PM

Exhibit Hall Open

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

Awards Luncheon

Sponsored by

2:00 PM – 4:45 PM


5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

Specialized Networking Sessions

Sponsored by

Thursday, February 23, 20129:00 AM – 11:45 AM


9:30 AM – 3:30 PM

Exhibit Hall Open

1:00 PM – 2:45 PM


For a current list of exhibitors, program information and to register, visit: www.acmashow.org

Unparalleled Opportunities Schedule-at-a-Glance

Register by February 20, 2012, to avoid higher onsite rates!

Register Now at www.acmashow.org

Join COMPOSITES 2012 on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to easily connect with other composites industry professionals. Go to www.acmashow.org to sign up and receive special announcements and discounts!

CCT Tutorials and Exam offered at the Show

Have you been enrolled for one of the CCT exams but just haven’t found the time to take the exam? Enroll now and take your certifi cation exam at COMPOSITES 2012 or attend one of the free tutorials on VIP, Open Molding or Wind Blade Repair. Get ahead of your peers and start preparing now for this once-a-year opportunity!

Tutorials are offered Tuesday, February 21 and are open to all attendees

and exhibitors.

The exam is Thursday, February 23, and is only open to those already enrolled

in a CCT program.

Remember to indicate your intent to take the CCT exam on the COMPOSITES

registration form!


Tuesday, February 21, 20129:00 AM – 12:00 PM


12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

University Poster Session

1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

General Session – Open to All

3:00 PM – 4:55 PM


5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

Opening Welcome Reception

Sponsored by

Wednesday, February 22, 20128:00 AM – 9:15 AM

General Session – Open To All

9:30 AM – 5:30 PM

Exhibit Hall Open

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

Awards Luncheon

Sponsored by

2:00 PM – 4:45 PM


5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

Specialized Networking Sessions

Sponsored by

Thursday, February 23, 20129:00 AM – 11:45 AM


9:30 AM – 3:30 PM

Exhibit Hall Open

1:00 PM – 2:45 PM



Unparalleled Opportunities Schedule-at-a-Glance

Register by February 20, 2012, to avoid higher onsite rates!

Register Now at www.acmashow.org

Join COMPOSITES 2012 on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to easily connect with other composites industry professionals. Go to www.acmashow.org to sign up and receive special announcements and discounts!

CCT Tutorials and Exam offered at the Show

Have you been enrolled for one of the CCT exams but just haven’t found the time to take the exam? Enroll now and take your certifi cation exam at COMPOSITES 2012 or attend one of the free tutorials on VIP, Open Molding or Wind Blade Repair. Get ahead of your peers and start preparing now for this once-a-year opportunity!

Tutorials are offered Tuesday, February 21 and are open to all attendees

and exhibitors.

The exam is Thursday, February 23, and is only open to those already enrolled

in a CCT program.

Remember to indicate your intent to take the CCT exam on the COMPOSITES

registration form!



Link-up with current suppliers, locate the products you need and learn about new vendors in the Exhibit Hall. Plus, see product displays and the ACE Showcase!

Exhibitors Exhibitors

Exhibit Hall HoursWednesday, February 22, 2012

9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

A

21st Century ChemicalA.P.C.M. Manufacturing LLCACMA CentralACS International, Inc.Advanced Plastics, Inc.Airtech Advanced Materials GroupAkzo Nobel Polymer ChemicalsAlbion Engineering CompanyAllied Custom GypsumAmerican Colors, Inc.AOC, LLCArkema, Inc.AshlandATC Formulated Polymers, Inc.Auburn UniversityAxel Plastics Research Laboratories, Inc.

B

B/E AerospaceBaltek, Inc., a division of 3A Composites

Bayer Material ScienceBeijing Partnerworld International Exhibition Co. Ltd.

BYK USA, Inc.

C

CCP CompositesCerex Advanced Fabrics, Inc.Changzhou Topweaving New Material Tech Co. Ltd.

Chemique Adhesives Inc. Chem-Trend LPChina National Building Material & Equipement Import & Export Co.

CHOMARAT North AmericaCMS North America, Inc.Colbond, Inc.COMPOSITES EUROPE LoungeComposites Innovation Centre Manitoba, Inc.

Composites OneComposites One – Learn the Secrets of the Lean Mean Closed Mold Machine Experts

Composites WorldContinental Diamond ToolControx - Neuhauser IncCPIC Crane CompositesCreative Pultrusions, Inc.CTG International (North America), Inc.Cutting Edge Composites

D

Dassault Systems Americas Corp.De-Comp Composites, Inc.DIAB Sales, Inc.Diatrim Tools Ltd.Diocel (U.S.A.) Inc.Diversifi ed Machine SystemsDixie Chemical CompanyDuraPlate Products Group

E

Eastman Machine CompanyElliott Company of Indianapolis, Inc.Endurance TechnologiesEngineered Fillers InternationalEngineered Syntactic SystemsEntec Composite MachinesEntropy Resins Eurovac, Inc.

F

Fiber Glass IndustriesFiberlayFiber-Line, Inc.FLOW INTERNATIONAL CORPFrees, Inc.Freudenberg Nonwovens

Exhibitor Listing



Exhibitors Exhibitors

Current as of December 9, 2011. See new exhibitors and the fl oor plan at www.acmashow.org.

G

Geis CompaniesGeneral Plastics Manufacturing Company

Gibco Flex-mold, Inc.GIE MediaGruber SystemsGS ManufacturingGurit

H

Hawkeye Industries, Inc.Henkel CorporationHennecke Inc.HK Research CorporationHodogaya Chemical (USA), Inc.Hollingsworth & Vose Co. HornHTS Pipe ConsultantsHuber Engineered Materials

I

INOACInnoVoc SolutionsInterplastic Corporation/NACIntertape Polymer GroupIntertekIPS Weld On CorporationITW Finishing Equipment AmericasITW Insulation SystemsITW PlexusITW SprayCoreITW WindGroup

J

Jensen Industries Inc.Jiaxing Sunny FRP Industries Co., LTDJRL Ventures, Inc.Jushi USA

K

Kenrich Petrochemicals, Inc.KMT Robotic SolutionsKNF FLEXPAK CorporationKnowlton TechnologiesKrauss Maffei Corporation

L

Lindau Chemicals, Inc.Litek Composites Corporation

M

Magnum Venus PlastechMartin Pultrusion GroupMCC Equipment & Service CenterMcClean AndersonMcLube Division/McGee Industries Inc.MDC Mould & Plastic Co., Ltd. Mektech Composites, Inc.Micro AirMIT-RCF, LLCMultiCam, Inc.Myers Engineering, Inc.

N

Nantong Power Plastic & Rubber Co., Ltd

Nederman, Inc. - HeadquartersNexeo SolutionsNortonNRC Automotive

O

Olympus NDTOwens Corning

P

Parabeam BVParson AdhesivesPCCR USAPerformance Minerals Corp.Plascore, Inc.Plasticolors IncorporatedPPG Industries, Inc.PPG-Devold LLCPrecision Drive SystemsPrecision Quincy CorporationPro-Set, Inc.

R

Reichhold, Inc.Rexco Mold Care ProductsRS Hughes Co.

S

SAERTEX USA, LLCSaint-Gobain ADFORSScott Bader, Inc.Sika CorporationSmart ToolingSogel Inc

Specialty Products Co.Spheretex America, Inc.Stiles Machinery, Inc.Structural Composites, Inc.Sworl Div. Of Prairie Technology Group, Inc.

Syrgis Performance ProductsSystem Three Resins, Inc.

T

TaconicTCR Composites, Inc.Tech Systems, LLCTechnical Fibre Products, Inc.Teijin Aramid USATelateks A.S.The Adhesive & Sealant CouncilThe R. J. Marshall CompanyTiodize Co., Inc.Toho Tenax America, Inc.TR IndustriesTricel Honeycomb CorporationTyvarian International LLC

U

Unicomposite Technology Co., Ltd.United Soybean BoardUniversal Star Group LimitedUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

University of Mississippi

V

Valspar CorporationVectorply CorporationVentilation SolutionsVirginia Economic Development Partnership

W

Warm Industrial NonwovensWatkins & Associates, Inc.Westech Aerosol CorporationWinona State UniversityWisconsin Oven CorporationWm. T. Burnett & Co.

X

Xamax Industries, Inc.


Education is key at COMPOSITES. For descriptions and speaker information, check the Conference Program online at www.acmashow.org. New sessions will be posted online.

Tuesday, February 21

9:00 AM - 12:00 PM■ CCT- Vacuum Infusion Process Tutorial■ CCT- Wind Blade Repair Tutorial

9:00 AM - 9:45 AMEducation Session■ High Performance Glass Fibers: From

Lab to Market Scale - 10 Years Trend

9:00 AM - 9:25 AMTechnical Papers■ Comparison of Cycloaliphatic and

Linear Aliphatic Glycols in Corrosion Resistant Unsaturated Polyester Resins

■ Thin Surface Coatings to Provide Low Cost EMI Shielding and Surface Conductivity in Composite Structures

■ Investigation of Process Improvements on PHBV-based Composites Using Multi-criteria Selection

■ Advances in Polyurethane Pultrusion: Cure Modeling and “Second Generation” Resin Systems

9:30 AM - 9:55 AMTechnical Papers■ Immersion Effects on FRP Composites

for Underwater Applications■ A Novel Approach to Manufacturing

Foam-Filled Honeycomb Sandwich Structures

■ Creep Behavior and Modeling of PHBV-based Composites for Construction Applications

■ Hardware Considerations When Processing Urethane Resins

10:00 AM - 10:25 AMTechnical Papers■ Glass Fiber Corrosion Study: Some

Unexpected Results■ Examination of Exposure Procedures

for Moisture Conditioning of Pultruded Composites

■ New Halogen-Free Fire Retardant Resin for Mass Transportation Applications

■ Development of Hybrid Composites Made From Glass and Natural Fibers

■ Composite Mechanical Testing- Starting from a Standard and Working

toward Testing Parameters that Give Meaningful Results

10:30 AM - 10:55 AMTechnical Papers■ Advantages of Polyurethane

Composites made by Vacuum Infusion and VARTM

■ Experimental and Numerical Analyses of Glued FRP and Wood by Epoxy Resin

■ Probabilistic Development and Application of a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Dataset for Pultruded Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composites

■ Fracture Toughness of Thermoset Polymers

■ Monomer Free Pultrusion Resin System

11:00 AM - 11:45 AMEducation Sessions■ Big Steps Towards a Small Footprint–

Development of Life Cycle Inventory Data for U.S. Composites

■ Calculating Your Break-Even Point

11:00 AM - 11:25 AMTechnical Papers■ Titanates and Zirconates– Why they

are Different than Silanes■ Development of Fiber Reinforced

Thermoplastic Composites Using in situ Polymerizable Polyamide6 as Matrix in RTM Process

■ GFRP Reinforced Stay-in-Place (SIP) Formwork for Concrete Seawalls

■ Urethane Resins Increase Opportunities for Pultruders

11:30 AM - 11:55 AMTechnical Papers■ High Performance Monomer Free

Resin Systems■ Continuous Fiber Tapes and Metal Cord

Reinforcement of LFT Composites for Enhanced Damage Resistance and Crashworthiness

■ Coating Polyurethane Pultrusion: Integrating Novel Exterior Durable Coating with State of the Art Application Methods

1:30 PM - 2:45 PMGeneral Session with Keynote Speaker, Rusty Wallace — Open to All

3:00 PM - 5:30 PMCCT-Open Molding Tutorial

3:00 PM - 3:45 PMEducation Sessions■ Making Sense of the Green Product

Marketplace: How to Use “Green” to Boost Profi ts

■ Styrene Communications for Employees and Plant Neighbors

■ Design and Construction of the First Worldwide Two-Way Flat Slab Parking Garage Reinforced with GFRP Bars

3:00 PM - 3:25 PMTechnical Papers■ Fire Resistance Cellulosic Fibers for

Polymer Composites■ Abrasive Waterjet Trimming of

Composites and Various Materials Using 5 & 6 Axis Robots

3:30 PM - 3:55 PMTechnical Papers ■ Flame Spray Deposition of Electrically

Conductive Traces on Polymer Substrates for System Integrated Composite Structures

■ Comparison of Fiber Reinforced Poly-mers in Global Fire Performance Tests

4:00 PM - 4:45 PMEducation Sessions ■ New Styrene Occupational Exposure

Level (OEL) Update■ Choosing the Right Catalyst■ High Performance Session■ Recycling Glass Fiber Reinforced

Polymer Thermoset Composites■ A National Perspective on the Use of

Prefabricated Bridge Elements and Sys-tems from the Transportation Industry

4:00 PM - 4:25 PMTechnical Papers ■ Effects of Thermal Mass on the Curing

of Thin and Thick Laminates

4:30 PM - 4:55 PMTechnical Papers ■ Thermal Press Curing of Advanced

Composite Parts


World Class Education


5:00 PM - 6:30 PMOpening Welcome Reception

Sponsored by

Wednesday, February 22

8:00 AM - 9:15 AMGeneral Session on Transportation and Composites — Open to All

9:30 AM Exhibit Hall Ribbon Cutting

9:30 AM - 5:30 PMExhibit Hall Open

12:00 PM - 1:30 PMAwards Luncheon

Sponsored by

2:00 PM - 2:45 PMEducation Sessions■ European Initiatives for Sustainability –

LCA and Recycling Approaches■ Styrene Toxicity Research, Regulatory

Status and Advocacy■ Color Trends- Decorative Surfaces■ SAMPE Session■ Choosing Lightweight Materials for

Heavy Duty Machines■ Robotic Integration to Your Composites

Process

2:00 PM - 2:25 PMTechnical Papers■ The Composites Manufacturing HUB –

Crowd Sourcing as the Norm■ A Study of Novel Alternatives to Cobalt

Metal Complexes in Unsaturated Polyester Resin Systems

2:30 PM - 2:55 PMTechnical Papers ■ Polyurethane Adhesives for Productivity

and Performance■ High Temperature Performance and

High Mechanical Strength Composite Material Development

3:00 PM - 4:45 PMEducation Session ■ ICPA General Session

3:00 PM - 4:25 PMEducation Sessions■ Using Repair and Maintenance to

Optimize Wind Blade and Component Performance– A Panel Discussion

■ Panel Discussion on Compliance Topics

3:00 PM - 3:45 PMEducation Sessions■ Packaging and Delivery Systems for

Adhesive and Sealant Applications■ Low/No Styrene Resin Technologies for

Composite Applications■ Composite Tooling Materials and

Fabrication■ SAMPE Session■ Business Issues and Trends Global

Composites Industry

4:00 PM - 4:45 PMEducation Sessions ■ FRP Mold Making Methods: Current

Trends and State-of-the-Art Infusion■ SAMPE Session■ Composites from Plant Oil-based Resin

and Fatty Acid Reactive Diluents■ Business Issues and Trends - Lean

Manufacturing■ Innovations in Additives

5:00 PM - 6:30 PMSpecialized Industry Networking Receptions

Sponsored by

Thursday, February 23

7:00 AM - 9:00 AMBecome a CCT, Take Your Exam Now!

9:00 AM - 10:45 AMEducation Sessions ■ Thermoplastic Composites and

Processes

9:00 AM - 9:45 AMEducation Sessions ■ FRP Rebar is No Longer an Emerging

Technology but Building a Successful History

■ Understanding Resin Chemistry for Successful LRTM Production

■ Nanomaterials from Trees– Harnessing the Power of Nature’s Basic Elements

■ Casting New Filler Materials

9:00 AM - 9:25 AMTechnical Paper ■ Development of the High Performance

GFRP with Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes

9:30 AM - 3:30 PMExhibit Hall Open

9:30 AM - 9:55 AMTechnical Paper ■ Long Fiber Polypropylene Growth in

Automotive Applications

10:00 AM - 10:45 AMEducation Sessions ■ Improving Your Measurement System:

Critical Factors to Consider■ Natural Fibers 101: When, Why and

How to Replace Fiberglass■ ICPA Technical Forum■ A Racing Win-Win: Composite High-

Speed Press Cure

11:00 AM - 11:45 AMEducation Sessions ■ USDA’s New Certifi ed Biobased Label

and the BioPreferred Program■ Resin Vaporization in Vacuum Infusion■ Methods of Building Self-heated

Tooling with Thermal Image Analysis■ The Impact of Shifting Housing

Demographics on the Cast Polymer Industry

■ Process and Equipment Breakthroughs in Long-Fiber Technology

11:30 AM - 1:00 PMLunch in the Exhibit Hall

1:00 PM - 1:45 PMEducation Sessions ■ The Future Use of Peroxides, Today■ Vacuum Infusion Processing Problems

and Solutions■ Correlation of Formulation and

Manufacturing Parameters in Innovative Direct SMC Technology

2:00 PM - 3:00 PMExhibit Hall Raffl e

Sponsored by

2:00 PM - 2:45 PMEducation Session ■ Reducing Styrene Emissions in

Composites Using Fatty Acid Monomers

■ Developments in Composite Manufacturing Technologies for the Auto Industry

Schedule and topics subject to change.


World Class Education


Safe Bathing for people � all abilities since 1971

Registration and Housing

www.acmashow.org

Register Now at www.acmashow.org! Register by February 20, 2012, to avoid higher onsite rates!

Full RegistrationFull conference includes access to all events, networking, education and the exhibit hall.

RegularACMA Member: $659Non-member: $869Government: $379

Exhibit Hall OnlyAccess to exhibit hall and two general sessions. Tickets to receptions and luncheon must be purchased separately.

Regular ACMA Member: $35Non-member: $55

Show SamplerAccess to general sessions, exhibit hall, welcome reception, and 3 educational or technical paper breakouts.

RegularACMA Member: $359Non-member: $479

For ticket prices, onsite rates, and student, spouse/guest and press registration information, see the Registration section at www.acmashow.org

Lock in the lowest hotel rate available to COMPOSITES 2012 attendees now by reserving your room today. Hotel rates are based on availability.

Housing Information

Make your reservation at www.acmashow.org!

Mandalay BayCOMPOSITES 2012 Headquarters HotelRoom Rate: $165/per night

LuxorRoom Rate: $75/per night

Thank you to our Sponsors! PLATINUM GOLD SILVER

If you are interested in sponsoring or exhibiting, contact Ryan Brown, Sr. Manager Exhibit and Sponsor Sales, at 703-682-1673 or [email protected].



Report Industry

2011 was the second year of recovery for most manufacturers, suppliers and distributors

serving the 5 billion pound U.S. composites industry. Hav-ing reached a volume of approximately 5.1 billion pounds in 2006, U.S. demand tumbled by an unprecedented 42 percent, or 2.1 billion pounds, over a 3-year period (2007-2009), with the steepest decline in 2009. However, a strong rebound in 2010 enabled the industry to recover 1.2 bil-lion pounds. The estimated full-year shipments in 2011 restored another 350 million pounds of demand and posi-tioned the industry at 4.6 billion pounds or 89 percent of the previous peak year. Staying alive and profitable in a V-shaped business cycle as severe as our most recent one has been challenging for most companies in the industry and the survivors can take a well-deserved deep breath as in-dicators suggest the worst is behind them. Looking ahead, the key economic indicators suggest 2012 will bring more tempered industry growth in the single digit range.

Purchasing Managers’ Index of ManufacturingA popular indicator, the Purchasing Managers’ Index of Manufacturing is a data series published by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). Every month since 1931 it has published this report based on a survey of 400 indus-trial companies. Any reading above 50 percent indicates

the manufacturing economy is growing and any score above 42.5 percent indicates an expansion of the overall economy in terms of gross domestic product (GDP).

• For the month of November 2011, the index was 52.7 percent, the 28th consecutive month the index indicated expansion by U.S. Manufacturing and the 30th consecutive month it marked growth in U.S.

State of the Industry Key numbers and economic indicators for 2012By Ray MacNeil

Safe Bathing for people � all abilities since 1971

Registration and Housing

www.acmashow.org

Register Now at www.acmashow.org! Register by February 20, 2012, to avoid higher onsite rates!

Full RegistrationFull conference includes access to all events, networking, education and the exhibit hall.

RegularACMA Member: $659Non-member: $869Government: $379

Exhibit Hall OnlyAccess to exhibit hall and two general sessions. Tickets to receptions and luncheon must be purchased separately.

Regular ACMA Member: $35Non-member: $55

Show SamplerAccess to general sessions, exhibit hall, welcome reception, and 3 educational or technical paper breakouts.

RegularACMA Member: $359Non-member: $479

For ticket prices, onsite rates, and student, spouse/guest and press registration information, see the Registration section at www.acmashow.org

Lock in the lowest hotel rate available to COMPOSITES 2012 attendees now by reserving your room today. Hotel rates are based on availability.

Housing Information

Make your reservation at www.acmashow.org!

Mandalay BayCOMPOSITES 2012 Headquarters HotelRoom Rate: $165/per night

LuxorRoom Rate: $75/per night

Thank you to our Sponsors! PLATINUM GOLD SILVER

If you are interested in sponsoring or exhibiting, contact Ryan Brown, Sr. Manager Exhibit and Sponsor Sales, at 703-682-1673 or [email protected].



GDP. The PMI for manufacturing turned negative in February 2008 and did not return to positive ter-ritory until 19 months later in August 2009. After the 28 months of positive growth the PMI peaked at 61.4 percent in February. Since then it slipped to the low 50s but moved up nearly two percentage points from October to November of 2011.

• The PMI is considered a strong and reliable indica-tor because it captures 10 separate measures in its monthly survey: new orders, backlog of orders, new export orders, imports, production, supplier deliver-ies, inventories, customer inventories, employment and prices, each of which is scored and reported each month. The strongest factors last month and their respective scores were new orders (57 percent), production (57 percent) and exports (52 percent), a healthy combination of elements. The new orders index jumped 4.3 percent—an encouraging sign be-cause it should convert into higher production and a stronger overall PMI in future months.

• 8 of the 18 manufacturing industries in the survey reported growth in November and the Plastics & Rubber Products segment reported business condi-tions were contracting.

It’s worth pointing out that a PMI reading of 53 per-cent correlates with GDP growth of 3.6 percent or nearly twice what the U.S. economy has delivered over the last few quarters. The rest of the U.S. economy simply has not matched the strong performance delivered by manufacturing. This is partly because manufacturing is a relatively small part of the U.S. economy, it employs only 9 percent of the work force and contributes about the same percentage of total GDP. So, while manufactur-ers can congratulate themselves on a decent recovery in 2011, they should worry that manufacturing strength isn’t spreading fast enough throughout the economy at large.

Automotive: Gaining TractionIn the first four months of 2011, U.S. light vehicle

sales were 20 percent greater than last year. However,

the earthquake and tsunami in Japan slowed U.S. sales because Japanese transplants encountered supply line constraints and, anticipating shortages, many dealers stopped discounting prices of Japanese cars. Ford, GM and Chrysler raised prices and dropped incentives at the same time, which caused sales to soften during the mid-dle months. Sales volumes regained momentum in Sep-tember and October to an annualized rate of 13 million, even though the prolonged flooding in Thailand reduced deliveries of electronic components needed in some ve-hicle assemblies. In the fourth quarter of 2011, dealers reported firmer prices and higher margins on sales.

Consumer confidence is still quite weak but the need to replace aging vehicles has turned the auto industry into one of the economy’s bright spots. The average vehicle on America’s roads is 10.6 years old, up from 8.8 years in 2000. That’s helping drive sales, even with the stock market and home prices slumping. The pent-up demand is not enough to push the industry to the 15-16 million vehicle sales level of pre-recession years any time soon, but it is creating some new demand.

U.S. automotive assembly companies experienced a few strong months of sales heading into the fourth quarter of 2011. Rough estimates state sales at least an 8 percent increase over 2010.


Add to these conditions the recent reorganizations of Chrysler and GM, and the auto industry today is notice-ably healthier. Balance sheets are in order, OEM’s are no longer over-producing and selling at too-generous discounts, and you have a genuine need to replace cars. These ingredients should be a good mix of business con-ditions in 2012 and many auto industry forecasters are estimating an 8-12 percent growth in the year ahead.

Specific to composites, the federal proposal to improve corporate average fuel efficiency standards (CAFE) will serve as a major stimulus to incorporate lightweight ma-terials like composites. The Obama Administration set new standards obliging light vehicles to achieve a CAFE standard of 35.5 mpg by 2016 and the November 2011 proposal from the National Highway Traffic Safety Ad-ministration (NHTSA) and the EPA pushed the bar up to 54.5 mpg by 2025. If a top-down mandate is not enough, recent surges in the price of gasoline and the fear of more fuel increases give car owners some real-world, bottom-up incentive to select lighter weight, more fuel efficient vehicles. Car makers will need to take several hundred pounds of weight out of their new vehicles if they wish to comply with the new CAFE guidelines. While a daunt-ing challenge, it is an opportunity for design engineers and composites fabricators to collaborate using new res-ins, glass compositions, innovative reinforcements and fabricating processes to solve problems.

For heavy truck statistics, visit us online at compositesmanufacturingblog.com, search “Industry Report.”

Construction: Building from the Ground, UpA traditional end-use market for composites, construc-

tion demand is mostly in the form of bath tubs, shower stalls, flat, corrugated and architectural grade panels, residential doors, garage door skins and window frames. New housing starts and remodeling expenditures, the primary drivers of composites usage, have been miser-ably weak the last few years. During October, the indus-try built homes at a seasonalized rate of 628,000 per year, demonstrating the rate of builds has fallen 70 percent from its peak in 2005 but up from 598,000 last year. Many

contractors and lending institutions have been driven to bankruptcy. Nearly 2.3 million jobs were lost in construc-tion since 2006, and the rate of unemployment in con-struction is 13.4 percent or 1.6 times the national average.

The U.S. housing market is still bouncing along the bottom with recent data showing no encouraging news. Housing starts and permits data indicate no meaning-ful improvement and the same applies to existing home sales (starting to inch upwards) and home prices (still falling). There is still a large inventory of existing homes for sale, due in part to weak demand and credit that re-mains tight in the wake of the mortgage crisis. This has led to the erosion in home prices, lenders further tighten-ing lending standards and buyers sitting on the sidelines.

Economists predict little improvement in housing be-fore 2013. Global Insights estimates single family hous-ing starts declined 11 percent to 419,000 in 2011 and will grow only 5.3 percent in 2012. Only in 2013 will we see any meaningful gain—a 51 percent jump to 664,000 single family starts followed by another 42 percent gain in 2014 to 992,000 units. That still leaves a considerable gap to overcome before reaching the pre-recession level of 1.7 million homes. Previous forecasts for improvement in 2012 had been dependent on stronger employment growth to revive housing formation and absorb excess supply. Pent-up demand for housing is accumulating as young adults remain at home but at some point will con-tribute to a revival in housing activity.

Energy: Increased Momentum, Gaining SpeedThe wind energy sector experienced a sharp decline

in 2010 from 9,922 megawatts (MW) installed in 2009 to 5,217 MW in 2010. Experts state this was a delayed reac-tion to the global financial crisis and was compounded by the absence of fresh capital, relatively low natural gas prices, softening wholesale electricity prices and slump-ing overall demand for energy. But it has shown strong recovery through the third quarter of 2011. 3,360 MW of new wind capacity was installed, up 74 percent from the first three quarters of 2010. Going into the fourth quarter, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)


reported that over 90 projects were under construction amounting to 8,482 MW. If half of these open projects are completed by year end, approximately 7,600 MW of new wind capacity will have been installed in 2011—a 46 percent increase over 2010—but still short of the record 9,922 MW installed in 2009.

Even though new installations fell sharply in 2010, the industry enjoyed strong federal and state incentives to invest in new wind facilities, which will keep the playing field attractive through 2012 when the current Produc-tion Tax Credit (PTC) expires. The U.S. wind industry has frequently experienced sharp up-and-down cycles largely because of the lack of consistent policy. Europe has led in establishing renewable energy goals and it is no accident that it has developed the most mature wind technologies and infrastructure. In the U.S., 29 states have adopted renewable targets for utilities operating within their boundaries but there is no federal equivalent. The U.S. wind industry has called for a national Renewable Energy Standard (RES) to provide long term investor confidence in the sector. But a draft law was not approved by the Senate in 2010 and its prospects of passage appear unlikely. The closest thing it received was a 2008 technical report issued by the U.S. Department of Energy that stud-ied and proposed a growth scenario for the U.S. to pursue a strategy where wind would provide 20 percent of the country’s energy requirements by 2030. To achieve that 20 percent scenario, new wind power installations would have to increase to more than 16,000 MW per year by 2018 and continue at that rate through 2030.

The domestic content in U.S. wind installations was 35 percent in 2005 and is currently 60 percent. The number of workers directly and indirectly employed by the wind energy industry is estimated at 75,000 and growing. It seems legislators would be eager to support this rare case of industrial insourcing and job creation, but un-fortunately it is more likely the U.S. Congress will again wait until the eleventh hour or later to renew or revamp the PTC. The current gridlock among Washington law-makers over so many substantive issues reinforces the argument that a PTC will not be passed by election year 2012. Even Vestas, the world’s largest wind turbine man-ufacturer, stated in its third quarter 2011 financial report that the industry will enter 2013 with no PTC extension and no federal RES.

What does that mean for composites demand? Most likely there will be a very busy 2012 with developers at-tempting to complete construction on new wind farms before incentives expire at the end of the year. That could translate into wind projects of 6,000 to 10,000 MW in 2012, then demand in 2013 will probably decline sharply. Should the PTC disappear entirely, the remaining state

incentives will stimulate a modest level of demand (4,000-6,000 MW) but certainly nothing close to the volume the industry has been gearing up for and aspired to sustain.

As U.S. wind installations set records in recent years and made the U.S. the 2005 global leader in annual in-stallations and cumulative capacity in 2008, China was building even greater momentum. In 2009, China sur-passed the U.S. volume of new installations with 13,804 MW new capacity erected and became the overall leader in 2010 when it reached cumulative capacity of 44,733 MW compared to 40,180 MW in place in the U.S. Overall, China’s average wind growth rate averaged 104 percent per year over the last five years. In fact, four of the top 10 leading global suppliers of wind turbines now hail from China. This rapid growth in China is worth noting because while its industry leaders have grown thanks to very strong domestic growth, a few are now bidding on projects in the U.S. Time will tell if they are successful in affecting the dynamics of the U.S. wind market a few years down the road.

Oil: No Longer a Pipe DreamComposites usage is thriving nowadays in one of the

more traditional forms of energy—crude oil production. Demand for glass-reinforced epoxy pipe in diameters ranging from 2 to 40 inches is registering over 20 percent growth in 2011 thanks to an oil drilling boom in the U.S. Not only is the overall rig rate approaching a high, but the number of drilling rigs searching for oil in the U.S. is the highest seen since 1987, according to Baker Hughes, Inc.

In early December 2011, there were 1,132 rigs em-ployed to search for crude oil compared to 856 rigs drill-ing for natural gas. One year ago, there were 777 rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. and five years ago there were

The industry can take a well-deserved deep breath as indicators suggest the worst is behind them.


just 279. U.S. exports of gasoline, diesel and other oil-based fuels are soaring, putting the nation on track to become a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011 for the first time in 62 years. This healthy jump in domestic exploration and production comes from “unconventional reservoirs” of crude oil that were deemed too hard to crack until breakthroughs in drilling technology and high prices of oil led exploration companies to switch rigs from natural gas to oil.

Filament wound or centrifugally wound epoxy pipe is used for onshore and offshore corrosion control in a va-riety of low to high pressure oilfield applications. It also provides improved flow capacity because of the resin-rich smooth interior and lowers installation costs because of the significant weight advantage versus steel tubing. Not only will it outlast competitive materials, composite pipe is typically a quarter to an eighth the weight of com-parable steel pipe, making it easier, safer and less expen-sive to install.

Forecasting the future price of oil is tricky at best, but the long term price trend clearly seems to be upwards, giving a positive forecast and a robust outlook for com-posites demand in the oil patch. However, other end uses of composite pipe for civil construction and water transport are likely to see only sluggish demand until the economy strengthens and municipalities are able to fund more infrastructure projects.

A Year of Single-Digit GrowthAt the close of calendar year 2011, there was still specu-

lation on how the U.S. economic recovery will proceed into 2012. It has been an exercise in patience waiting for stronger numbers from the U.S. housing industry, vari-ous consumer segments and the jobs market. The most recent government release of estimated GDP and indus-trial production numbers suggest we are in for more quarters of relatively soft growth. Third quarter GDP was revised down from 2.5 percent to 2.0 percent and estimates of industrial production are 3.6 percent for the full year 2011 and a mere 1.6 percent for 2012. Given this context of low expectations in the economic data, we are likely to see another year of single-digit growth in the U.S. composites industry as well.

Ray MacNeil is a composite consultant based in Wexford, Pa. Email comments to [email protected].

800.621.8003 www.compositesone.com

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To read an in-depth forecast on the aerospace, marine and sports & recreation visit us online at compositesmanufacturingblog.com.Search keyword “industry report.”


today Infrastructure

Artist Walter Geiger recently designed functional sculptures to inspire Orlando citizens in his composite outdoor bus stop shelters. His

collection, named the Cascade series, was installed in September 2011 after three years of development. Geiger wanted to put art in a public space and bring FRP composites into the limelight of a new market—art and architecture.

An engineer, architect and sculptor, Geiger earned his master’s degrees in Architecture and Landscape Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and is a member of the American Institute of Architects and a fellow of the Society of American Registered Architects. In his projects, he applied three philosophies: People who prosper in communities should give back to the community, those who cannot afford art are the ones who deserve it most, and through collaboration, engineers, architects and artists can move processes and materials from one industry into another.

Prospering in communitiesIn 2008, Geiger attended a benefit gala with his

wife, Anne, a former Orange County school board

member, where he met Linda Watson, the former executive director of LYNX (the central Florida regional transportation authority.) The two spoke about implementing art in public spaces, which Watson could provide in the form of bus stop shelters along popular Orlando routes. LYNX funded the group to build four bus stop shelters with art transit initiative funding. Geiger connected with engineering firm Entech Creative, Orlando, Fla., to use technology the engineering firm was developing for use in theme parks.

Geiger spent over 15 years working with Entech Creative Chief Engineer John Marhoefer building large composite structures at major theme parks like Universal Studios and Disney World. After working with Marhoefer on a recent theme park project, he was intrigued by the process of forming composites into organic shapes where form and function come together. Geiger draws inspiration from natural forms and felt that the free flowing composite lamination process fit his vision for the nature-inspired sculptures. “The natural forms represent free-flowing waterfalls,” says Geiger. “The use of composites allowed us to maintain the pure integrity of the shapes.”

Taking Art to the Streets

Composite structures along Orlando’s International Drive

By Angie McPherson


Art for those who need itThe sculptures were strategically installed where

tourists and workers in the tourism industry could see them. “I don’t want my sculptures in galleries; I want them on the living, breathing streets. Central Florida is a huge tourist destination and thousands of people traverse it daily to see attractions and work in the service industry,” says Geiger. The bus stops reinforce the surrounding landscape using artistic techniques that keep it from competing with the surrounding buildings. For example, using the color white and curvilinear forms to enhance the buildings and integrate with the landscape.

The Cascade series is composed of four different shaped sculptures, each approximately 3 feet wide and 15 to 16 feet tall. The structures are laminated FRP panels using spun fiberglass, fire retardant resins and a honeycomb core. “There were different thickness core and laminated skin materials needed on parts of the structures. Our main focus was on perfecting joining techniques because this was a 100 percent laminated structure and the seeming techniques had to be looked at carefully to ensure it would not take away from artistic expression,” says Marhoefer.

From one industry to anotherThe challenge for Geiger was determining the

tolerances and properties of composite materials,

specifically resins, to match his material needs. In order to find more information he contacted several composite industry members such as Pat Hery, sales representative at distributor company Fiberglass Coatings, Inc., in St. Petersburg, Fla., about spun fiberglass mats and how they mixed with certain resins. He collaborated with Bill Karren, Jr., principal at Lochsa Engineering in Las Vegas, who performed advanced analysis on the composite materials. “It was a complicated process to get the composite information from Pat into a form that Bill could use to analyze, and finally, numbers that could be used to manufacture the forms John was making.” says Geiger. The team built four full-scale prototypes to test the tolerances of the composite materials to submit to LYNX and Orange County building department.

This process of research, testing and meeting building specifications took nearly the entire three-year planning period. “In order to do all the testing required by the county for the design and installation of non-traditional structures, we had to go through empirical as well as technical analysis,” says Geiger. “We even used FARO digital technology to assist in documentation. That way we could model complex shapes.” All the research was completed by Geiger, Entech and Lochsa without public or industry funding. “Lochsa, Entech and I made the investment, which really means that the bus stops were a technical gift to the city of Orlando and to the composite industry.”

Four Cascade series sculptures were installed along Orlando’s international Drive, designed by artist Walter Geiger and manufactured by entech Creative.

Entech Creative is known for building a giant piano for FAO Schwartz that could light up and play when you dance on it – later popularized in the motion picture Big, featuring actor Tom Hanks. More recently, Entech engineered and built the dragon in Harry Potter at Universal Studios, among many other technically challenging projects.

Did You Know?

To read this story in its entirety, visit us Composites Manufacturing online at compositesmanufacturingblog.com and search keyword “bus stop.”

MC

Geiger wanted to put art in a public space and bring FRP composites into the limelight of a new market—art and architecture.



Advances Automotive

Recent manufacturing trends towards fuel-efficient cars, sustainable infrastructure solutions and renew-

able wind energy designs are forcing OEMs to look for reasonable alternatives to traditional metals. We know composite properties naturally provide these industries with lightweight and durable parts. However, the key to bringing more composites into these markets is to find more cost and time efficient solutions for manufacturing techniques. The University of Washington’s Automo-bili Lamborghini Advanced Composite Structures Lab (ACSL) in Seattle, Wash., is working hard to develop such techniques. One of its biggest breakthroughs has been with Forged Composite, developed in collaboration with the Automobili Lamborghini and Callaway Golf.

Inaugurated in 2009, ACSL is a composite research center co-sponsored by airline giant Boeing and luxury sports car manufacturer Lamborghini. The center acts as a technology liaison for the two composite manufactur-ers and focuses on providing short-term research and collaboration on Lamborghini and Boeing projects as well as long-term research for composite innovation, focused on out-of-clave techniques. Forged technology

builds on advanced com-pression molding pro-cesses using short fibers instead of continuous strands to create a stron-ger material comparable to metal. This new pro-cess for manufacturing carbon fiber parts means

less time curing and less waste. As a result, it signifi-cantly reduces manufacturing costs and production time.

Cutting edge composite researchForged Composite consolidates carbon fiber chips and

a resin film into a sheet. The sheet is placed into a 1,000-ton heated matched metallic mold where the material cures in a short amount of time. The random arrange-ment of fibers creates a part stronger and lighter than aluminum. Once the part is cured it contains more than 500,000 fibers per square inch, which is similar to other carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) parts, but the Forged Composite part is manufactured in significantly less time. It is currently being used in the structural window frames on the Boeing 787, the head of Callaway Golf club drivers and the tub and suspension arms in the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento concept car.

Project #1: Boeing structural window framesIn 2005, Professor Paolo Fe-

raboli, director at the ACSL, started working with Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administra-tion (FAA) to test the new com-posite parts on the Boeing 787

Dreamliner. During this project, the ACSL tested several 787 components produced using Hexcel’s HexMC, which is a new material derived from aerospace carbon fiber/

Structure, Sport and StyleNew material advances with Forged Composite designs

By Angie McPherson

The Lamborghini sesto elemento carbon fiber concept car was developed at the Advanced Composites structures Lab.

This is a sample of Forged Composite material.


epoxy tape. After determining that the short fibers would work well on the new Dreamliner, Boeing contracted with Nordam Interiors and Structures Division in Tulsa, Okla., to manufacture the structural window frames and other parts using a process similar to compression mold-ing.

Nordam implemented the Hexcel HexMC-based parts in the window frames and other small parts like brackets, fittings and gussets that are typically made from aluminum. “The main difference between Forged Composite and the Boeing structural window frames is the materials used to manufacture. The parts developed by Forged Composite were short fibers combined with a resin film as opposed to the Boeing carbon fiber/epoxy tape that was chopped and assembled into a sheet,” says Feraboli.

The change resulted in higher damage tolerant parts that are cheaper to construct than other carbon fiber methods and lighter than the usual aluminum parts. Ac-cording to Boeing, the window frames are approximately 50 percent lighter than the aluminum counterpart. Nor-dam continues to manufacture thousands of structural window frames for the 787 and expects to yield more than $200 million over the next 15 years.

Project #2: Callaway’s RAZR Hawk In 2007, the ACSL joined with the Calla-way Golf Company, Carlsbad, Calif., in a collaborative effort to improve Callaway drivers with similar short fiber technol-ogy used during the Boeing structural window frames project. “We colloquially refer to the material as carbon fiber hard-wood because it looks similar to cherry

or walnut trees after manufacturing,” says Feraboli. Callaway wanted to collaborate to improve its blad-

der molded laminated construction on the Diablo Oc-tane driver. “The laminated composites were limited in shaping and thickness variation and we were looking for a material that had more capability when it came to shaping,” says Steve Ehlers, vice president of golf club innovation at Callaway Golf. Callaway uses Forged Composite to produce carbon fiber driver heads that meet the requirements for bending strength in the body and maintain low weight properties.

The RAZR Hawk driver, which was designed using the new technology, also takes advantage of the material’s shaping properties in the head, shaping an intricate pat-tern that improves the aerodynamics of the club and in-cludes shapes molded inside. This year’s new adjustable driver, the RAZR Fit, which will be released at the end of January, uses Forged Composite in the head of an adapt-able club that can change loft, face angle and weight distribution. Previously, implementing composites in this location would skew the driver’s center of gravity. “After further research with the material, we determined how to use the weight savings and make an adjustable driver without sacrificing performance,” says Ehlers.

In recognition of its ingenuity, Callaway Golf was awarded the Award for Composites Excellence (ACE), Most Creative Application Award at the American Com-posites Manufacturers Association’s COMPOSITES Show in 2011 for the use of Forged Composite in its RAZR Hawk driver. “We simply couldn’t have completed that design with a laminated composite. Forged Composite proved to be a useful technology in our application.”

Project #3: Lamborghini Sesto Elemento tubThe Lamborghini Sesto Elemento concept car, literally

named the “Sixth Element” to represent carbon on the Periodic Table of Elements, was designed to be a test bed for carbon fiber technology. The Sesto Elemento used the research conducted at the ACSL and Callaway to com-plete carbon fiber testing in less than a year. The ACSL began working with the project in 2009 and the Sesto El-emento debuted at the 2010 Paris Auto Show in October.

The Sesto Elemento uses Forged Composite to lighten the car weight to approximately 2,200 pounds—which is 1,000 pounds lighter than the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera—and increase the power to weight ratio. The Sesto Elemento is powered by the same V10 en-gine as the Gallardo Superleggera, enabling the carbon fiber super car to accelerate from 0 to 62 mph in 2.5 seconds instead of 3.4 seconds. The car uses carbon fiber extensively throughout the vehicle, including Forged in the tub and suspension arms. Lamborghini replaced vacuum-assisted resin transfer (VARTM) molded parts to focus on testing Forged Composite technology and de-veloping CFRP parts at higher production volumes.

“There were a couple of good surprises that came out of the Sesto Elemento’s development. For example, we didn’t realize a Forged tub would work as well as it did. The whole manufacturing process only took five min-utes. That was a good confirmation that exceeded our hope and expectations,” says Feraboli. According to Lamborghini, the same part would normally take a full day using VARTM, three to four days with a woven

The Lamborghini team building one of the 20 sesto elementos that will be released in 2013.


prepeg, and four to five days with a prepeg. The next step for further integration of this technology into other car designs is to develop a repair strategy for the car-bon fiber parts. “As you can imagine, if a plane on the runway gets hit by a servicing truck, or if a car gets hit on the highway, the repair technician will need to know exactly what kind of damage has occurred. So we have developed a strategy with Boeing to conduct research on the repair process,” says Feraboli.

At the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show, Lamborghini an-nounced it will produce 20 Sesto Elementos by 2013 solely for track use. The Sesto Elemento concept is an important technology development test bed and it will push the integration of composites into other Lambo-rghini family vehicles. Some of the carbon fiber parts de-veloped during the Sesto Elemento trial are anticipated to filter down to other Lamborghini car designs such as the Volkswagen Group, Audi, Porsche and Buggati, and it hopes to spread the use of the Forged Composite pro-cess to the rest of the automotive industry.

The future of ForgedAll three manufacturers, Boeing, Callaway and Lambo-

rghini, agree that the new technology is “the way of the future.” Parts are made faster, stronger and structurally

less rigid. For example, after already seeing an impact in the sports industry, Callaway says it will continue to re-search Forged Composite integration and expects to use it extensively in new drivers.

Ehlers is also involved in helping the rest of the indus-try adapt to the new process into other sports equipment. “I’ve been talking to a number of companies on how best to use the material,” says Ehlers. “Without naming spe-cifics, expect to see this material in many other parts such as crank sets for bicycles and derailer parts,” he says.

On the automotive front, Feraboli expects that future Lamborghini designs will continue to see more power ratio increases through weight reduction from technol-ogy like Forged. “We need to continue to make produc-tion more amenable for other cars that are less expensive than the Sesto Elemento,” he adds. The ACSL and Lamborghini are still developing new out-of-autoclave materials and processes for carbon fiber. “We’re going to continue our research. It has been a goal of Lamborghini and the ACSL over the last few years to improve and implement carbon fiber technology,” says Feraboli.


The sesto elemento features a Forged Composite tub that cures in five minutes.


W I S C O N S I N O V E NC O R P O R A T I O N



Log onto www.acmanet.org for more ACMA news

InsideACMA

Plan Strategically for a Prosperous Year

Tom Dobbins, CAE

Composites manufacturers are working in a highly competi-

tive environment. To compete, you either have to win on price, qual-ity or value—a combination of the two. No matter how you choose to compete, COMPOSITES 2012 is your best bet for improving com-petitiveness.

If you are competing on cost, the educational sessions will teach you the most efficient way to

make your products, not to mention numerous oppor-tunities to work with exhibitors on cutting the costs of your materials and processes. If you are competing on quality you will learn about cutting-edge materials and processes to manufacture the highest quality products. You will also be inspired by the ACE and Pinnacle award winners who represent the best of the best in the indus-

try. Regardless of how you compete, NASCAR driver

Rusty Wallace and other featured speakers will give you new insights in taking on the competition and thriving. Finally, you will have the opportunity to learn from your peers. With over 3,000 attendees, you will be able to con-nect with manufacturers around the country and around the world who include the best and the brightest in the industry.

Come to COMPOSITES and you too can be in the driv-er’s seat steering your company into the future.



AOC........................................................... Back Cover

Baltek ..........................................................................6

CCP .............................................................................3

Composites One ........................... Inside Front Cover

Composites One-Demo ...........................................31

Elliott Company ........................................................10

Frees .........................................................................38

ITW ..............................................................................9

Mektech ....................................................................39

MVP ...........................................................................13

NEXEO Solutions .......................... Inside Back Cover

Saertex ........................................................................7

Wisconsin Oven .......................................................37

Advertiser Index


Finally, there’s a fire retardant, low smoke/low smoke toxicity phenolic FRP that’s processed as easily as polyester. It’s called Cellobond FRP and it’s processed from phenolic resins available in a wide range of viscosities for:• Handlay-up/spray-up* • RTM• Filamentwinding* • SCRIMP• Pressmolding • Pultrusion *FM approved

Gel coated Cellobond Phenolic FRP far exceeds DOT and FAA requirements and meetsallstringentEuropeanfireperfor-mance tests with ease.Thelowdensity,hightemperatureresis-tance, low flame and low smoke / smoke toxicity properties make Cellobond the hottest new material for fire retardant applications. For the aircraft and aerospace industries that require ablative materials, wealsoofferDuriteresinsfromMomentive.Call or write today for more information.

Finally, a fire retardant FRP with unmatched processability.

Mektech Composites Inc.Distributor for Momentive Specialty Chemicals, Inc. (Formerly Hexion)

40 Strawberry Hill Rd. • Hillsdale, NJ 07642Tel: (201) 666-4880 Fax: (201) 666-4303E-Mail: [email protected] • www.momentive.comCellobond and Durite are registered trademarks of Momentive Specialty Chemicals, Inc.

More Ways to Plan for your Success

See the Lean Mean Closed Mold Machine Live at COMPOSITES ’12February 21-23, Booth #629

Presented by Composites One, the Closed Mold Alliance and more than 15 industry partners.

3.25x2.5 CM market place ad_FINAL.indd 1 12/13/11 6:14:40 PM

NEW! Participate in ACMA’s Membership CallGet the latest news from ACMA headquarters and learn how to get the most out of your membership. Join ACMA Chief Staff Executive Tom Dobbins in January or Febru-ary, for the new monthly membership webinars. Whether you’re a new member or a long-time member, you’ll learn something about your association. If you are interested in participating, contact ACMA Membership Manager Erin Lauria at 703-682-1674.

New Ways to Promote Your CompanyThe Composites Manufacturing 2012 Media Kit is now available online on ACMA’s website. Inside you will find the editorial calendar as well as advertising rates. ACMA members receive a discounted rate to advertising in a magazine that reaches over 10,000 people. Advertising in online and e-communications like ACMA’s website, Insider and CM Interviews is also available. For more in-formation, visit contact Ryan Brown at [email protected] or 703-525-0511.

ACMA Holding Chemical Processing SymposiumACMA’s first-ever Chemical Processing Symposium will be held on May 23-24, 2012, in Houston. This event will focus on educating end-users and engineers in the chemical industry about the benefits of FRP in highly corrosive environments. Stay tuned for more information on registration, programming and sponsorship opportu-nities.

40

New MembersAm-Liner East, IncBerryville, Va.

ATC Truck Covers, IncOttawa, Kan.

Champion Fiberglass, IncSpring, Texas

Crown Plastics CompanyHarrison, Ohio

Doug FreyChapel Hill, N.C.

Geis CompaniesStreetsboro, Ohio

GrafTech International Holdings IncParma, Ohio

HZW Environmental Consultants LLCMentor, Ohio

Insituform Technologies, IncChesterfield, Mo.

Lightsail EnergyOakland, Calif.

Martin Pultrusion Groups, IncBedford, Ohio

Paneltec LLCLafayette, Colo.

Research Investment, IncCleveland, Ohio

Utility Composites Intl. LtdDayton, Ohio

W & W Fiberglass Tank, Co.Pampa, Texas

Westech Aerosol CorpBremerton, Wash.

New CCTsGeorge Barrios, CCT-IAberdeen, S.D.

Michael Bryant, CCT-IHuntersville, N.C.

Tshewang Dorsi, CCTEastport, Maine

Brian Duffy, CCTFarmington, Maine

Patrick Fogg, CCTEastport, Maine

Damian Gomes, CCTPerry, Maine

Frank Greco, CCTEastport, Maine

Gyedun Gyaltso, CCTWarren, Maine

Jason Hebert, CCTRangeley, Maine

Collin Heupel, CCTEastport, Maine

Robert Hildebrant, CCTMississauga, OntarioCanada

Stephanie Huber, CCT, CCT-IMississauga, OntarioCanada

Thinh Huynh, CCT-VIP, CCT-IAberdeen, S.D.

Jarret Morales, CCT-VIPAberdeen, S.D.

Dorjee Namgyal, CCT-VIPAberdeen, S.D.

James Ng, CCT-WBRSavanah, Texas

Patrick O’Donnell, CCT-VIPAberdeen, S.D.

Wayne Radloff, CCT-VIPAberdeen, S.D.

Robert Richards, CCTMississauga, OntarioCanada

Mahendra Sinnarajah, CCTMississauga, OntarioCanada

Jared Spiller, CCTMississauga, OntarioCanada

Jerehmi Stayner, CCTMississauga, OntarioCanada

Marek Szettel, CCTMississauga, OntarioCanada

Cameron Tedford, CCTMississauga, OntarioCanada

Dorji Tshewang, CCTMississauga, OntarioCanada


Vehicle Lightweighting

In 2011, the automotive industry started dropping a few thousand pounds off of compact cars and trucks to

increase fuel efficiency. Expect this trend to

continue.

Stronger Planes

Aerospace composites soared when the Boeing 787 passed aviation tests in Sep-

tember, putting composite materials on front page

news and more air-planes.

Cars with Wings

“It’s 2012, why don’t we have flying cars?” Well, soon you’ll have the opportunity to purchase one. The Terrafu-gia Transition is expected

to hit the roads late 2012.

Personal Space Travel

Virgin Galactic will soon provide personal space travel in SpaceShipTwo vehicles by

Scaled Composites. Even Bigelow Aerospace is build-

ing space hotels for this growing industry.

Is that a robot?

Honda recently upgraded its Asimo robot to run, pour

drinks, communicate through sign language and do other

tricks, making it the most inundated robot ever

built.

Welcome to a new year filled with engineer-

ing innovation! Last year was bursting with success stories that

massively impacted the industry and spurred trends towards composite in-tegration in new markets. As we wave

goodbye to 2011, here are some interesting developing technolo-

gies that the industry can look forward to in 2012.

Eye on 2012: Developing TechnologiesWhat was your favorite composite engineered product from 2011? Weigh-in now at compositesmanufacturingblog.com.


To read these and other composites breaking news, visit compositesmanufacturingblog.com and click on “Composites in the News.” For daily composites updates, follow us on Twitter @cmmagazine

CM In the News

MC

“Once the bridge has completed its lifespan, the plastic can then be recycled again and used for other purposes; meaning it will never have to go to landfill.”

William Mainwaring, CEO at Vertech Compositescelebrating its recycled plastic bridge – now the longest in the world.

“The roof crush and side impact strength is greatly improved on these bodies and I think this is a great new attribute for the DMC-EV.”

Chris Anthony, founder of Epic Electrical Vehicles, on helping the new DeLorean move from a steel body to a one made from composites.

“This is GM going outside the four walls of the company to bring new technologies to customers.”

Steve Girsky, vice chairman at General Motors, announcing the company’s partnership with Teijin to develop carbon-fiber parts.

“Structural fiber doesn’t sound alluring, but we’re talking billions of dollars of potential market.”

Larry Dickinson, founder at 3F, LLC in Raleigh, N.C., speaking to attendees of The Network at the Institute for Advanced

Learning and Research about the potential of bio-based fibers.

“It’s gratifying for our development to be highlighted, particularly in light of the many wind turbine projects funded by the Department of Energy this year.”

Mike Gallagher, director of public sector business at Bayer MaterialScience, LLC, talking about the success of its new polyurethane technology

for stronger, longer wind blades.


< Increase Demand by Investing Smartly Roch Lambert is president of the Recreational Boat Group, a portfolio company owned by Platinum Equity. He has global profit-and-loss responsibility over three historic boat brands: Four Winns, Glastron and Wellcraft, which were all acquired through the Genmar bankruptcy. Lambert is well versed in the consumer dynamics that motivate boat purchases and says he anticipates a profitable future looking ahead.

FRP’s Role in Rehabilitating Canada>Dr. Brahim Benmokrane is a National

Science Engineering Research Chair (NSERC) and professor of Innovative FRP Composite Materials for

Infrastructure in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Sherbrooke, located in Sherbrooke,

Canada. He obtained his engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne,

Switzerland and his Ph.D. in civil engineering from University of Sherbrooke.

To read the interviews with these and other leading members of the composites industry, visit compositesmanufacturingblog.com and click on “Q&A Interviews.”

Domino Effect in Bio-based Composites> Lane Segerstrom studied Business at Bethel

College in St. Paul, Minn., before obtaining a degree in Entrepreneurship from Baylor University in Waco,

Texas. In 2009, Segerstrom founded Carbon Stalk LLC and its subsidiary Corn Board Manufacturing, Inc., which holds an exclusive licensing agreement to a

patented corn-based structural composite technology by the University of Illinois.

.

CM Online Exclusives straight From the source: industry Leaders speak Out

<CAFE 54.5 MPG is a Catalyst for ChangeBruce Benda is the vice president of automotive and transportation for Bayer MaterialScience LLC. He has worked with Bayer since 1985 and has spent a large portion of that time working in the global automotive industry. He recently returned from the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) Management Briefings where much discussion surrounded President Obama’s announcement of his intention to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to 54.5 mpg by the year 2025.


Take a second look and see if you can find the differences in these two pictures.

Confounded Composites!

Changes:1) Removed tape on the ground2) Removed Nationwide logo on windshield3) Switched black helmet to a white helmet 4) Removed hose on the ground (on bottom right)5) Removed tire marks on left bottom6) Added another row of orange cones on light post7) Removed logo from left leg of second man8) Removed sticker on bottom right of windshield9) Shortened Home Depot sign on left hand side10) Removed tailfin from back of car

Original

PostcureChatter

Modified

Changes10

To an engineer, NASCAR

looks a little different than

it does to a fan. Engi-

neers ask what types of

materials and techniques

will allow it to withstand

hours of high-speed rac-

ing. The short answer

is: sheet metal, powerful

engines and good tires.

However, composites are

slowly integrating into

team designs.

Turn to page 4 for an

inside look at one team’s

journey to further inte-

grate composites.

compositescompositesmanufacturingmagazine.com/digital/2012/... · 2 composites manufacturing...

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