A recent investment in composites is an investment in clean energy

The Windquest Group, a West Michigan-based private investment group has made an investment in Energetx Composites of Holland, Michigan. Details of the transaction were not disclosed. The proceeds of the investment will be used to continue the scale-up of Energetx Composites’ manufacturing equipment for the production of utility-scale wind turbine blades, among other purposes.

Windquest has been investing in the clean technology sector over the past several years in companies that are focused on the generation of renewable energy and developing technologies advancing energy efficiency. Windquest will be a financial partner as well as joining the Energetx Board of Directors.

“We are pleased to be working together with Energetx Composites,” says Dick DeVos, President of Windquest. ”The members of the Energetx team have a history in developing and manufacturing advanced composite products. We are looking forward to helping them continue to grow this business and meet the increasing demands for composite products across a variety of industries; including wind energy, transportation, aerospace, as well as others.”

Kelly Slikkers, Vice President of Business Development Energetx Composites adds, “Energetx is honored to now have The Windquest Group as a part of our organization. Windquest brings business and management experience. We look forward to working with them.”

Energetx recently announced its Manufacturing Master Supply Agreement with Aeroblade of Victoria Spain, through which the company will become Aeroblade’s North American manufacturing partner, supplying utility scale wind turbine blades throughout the United States and Canada. In addition, Energetx was recently awarded a “Reinventing Michigan” award by Governor Rick Snyder. At a ceremony at the company’s manufacturing plant in Holland last month, the Governor praised the entrepreneurial spirit of Energetx and recognized the company leadership for contributing to the reinvention of the State of Michigan.

Energetx Composites is headquartered in Holland, Michigan. The company offers manufacturing solutions for composite fabrication including engineering, design, tooling, process development, technology and manufacturing assembly.

Energetx Composites www.energetxcomposites.com

Composite structural sizing software improves with new design and manufacturing features

HyperSizer v6 structural sizing and analysis software can help reduce structure weight while maintaining strength and improving manufacturability, especially for complex composite and metallic designs. Developed and proven at NASA, the software—the first commercialized by the agency—has a track record of 20% weight reduction in high-profile government and commercial aerospace projects.

Composites have gained wide acceptance and validation in aerospace applications while accelerating growth in a variety of industries. Their weight-to-strength properties promote fuel efficiency and allows hitting energy targets without impacting durability. “One of the biggest roadblocks to effective composite design is the inability of engineers to adequately explore optimized layups simultaneously with other design variables,” says Collier Research President Craig Collier. “This results in design inefficiencies and compromises.”

To address the issues, HyperSizer works with FEA solvers in a continuous, iterative loop, conducting trade studies and examining millions of potential design candidates down to the ply, even element level. The software ensures structural integrity through an extensive suite of failure analysis predictions that are validated to test data. The tool also enhances manufacturability by minimizing ply drops, identifying and controlling laminate transition drop/add boundaries, and defining best ply shapes and patterns. Hypersizer can be used from preliminary design to final analysis.

New features in HyperSizer v6 include:

• Manufacturability optimization – To help design for efficient manufacturing, the software can now identify, define, and control ply-count compatibility, laminate sequencing, interleaving, and ply-drop minimization. This results in fewer processing steps, cost-effective layups, and a faster turnaround in the mold.
• Post-buckling analyses – Automated compression, shear, and compression-shear post-buckling analyses have been added. These are based on complex NASA-developed methods that serve as the foundation for metal aircraft design. Integrated with flexural-torsional buckling, these let engineers cut weight in aluminum skin airframes. Such analyses, difficult to perform with nonlinear FEA alone, have been extended to composite material systems as well.
• Panel Concepts – Two novel, damage-tolerant composite architectures are now available, providing more structural sizing variables and optimization flexibility: Prseus is a Boeing, NASA, and Air Force Research Lab-developed dry-fabric woven material poltruded rod structure, while “reinforced core sandwich” is an alternative sandwich panel similar to foam sandwich. Specialized analyses for both these panel concepts have been implemented and correlated to test data established for accurate strength predictions.

Serving as the analysis hub and automating data transfer during design and manufacturing cycles, HyperSizer integrates with FEA software, such as Nastran and Abaqus, and with composite CAD tools, such as Catia and FiberSIM. HyperSizer ensures that design and analysis departments are kept current and working with the same design data.

“Given the increasing emphasis on more complex materials, engineers must improve and automate their design processes to reach higher levels of efficiency,” says Collier. “It’s no longer good enough to spot-check. Each part must be examined as a system. HyperSizer lets engineers more fully explore the entire design space.”

“It’s challenging to cut weight while maintaining strength and controlling cost,” says Tom Ashwill, technical leader in Sandia National Laboratories Wind Energy Technology Department. “HyperSizer has the capability to systematically optimize placement of a variety of different materials throughout the blade to maximize load resistance and minimize weight and thus cost.”

Collier Research Corporation
www.hypersizer.com

Composite design and manufacturing center opens May 6, 2011

The National Composites Center near Dayton Ohio is taking a lead in composites and advanced materials, their structural design, optimization, and manufacturing simulation by offering all businesses access to this resource. The new Center opens on May 6^th. Interested parties can meet the staff and partners on that date, and learn of the capabilities and opportunities that can move a business forward in composites simulation.

The Center is a response to a call from the composites-manufacturing industry. This resource will provide exposure and accessibility to design and simulation software capabilities creating an environment for composites experts, engineers, and technicians, throughout the composites supply chain – from materials suppliers to equipment manufacturers to end users of composite structures.

Design simulation software has always been difficult to justify from an ROI perspective. Small and mid-sized companies need technical expertise in addition to an investment in hardware and software. This presents a predicament for growing companies to consume the entire financial burden. The Center is intended to alleviate some of this burden by providing: a source, accessibility, training, incremental usage and access to experts (academia and industrial), and finally engineering communications with larger companies enhancing their capability to improve their design and manufacturing capabilities communications with their customers. The benefits of finding a design or manufacturing flaw through simulations can be enormous. The center also has the capabilities for large batch processing.

For more details, contact Patti Johnson at: pjohnson@compositescenter.org or (937) 297-9454

Composites Manufacturing Design Center

compositecenter.org

Webcore Tech awarded $1.8 million for advanced blade material

WebCore Technologies LLC has been awarded $1,800,000 as part of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Small Business Phase III Xlerator program. WebCore was selected for a next phase development and commercialization of Tycor W, an engineered composite core material. The company material says it is gaining acceptance in utility wind-turbine blades due to its ability to significantly improve performance and quality while reducing cost and weight, critical components to making wind power more cost competitive with other power generation sources.

Tycor W combines fiber reinforcements, such as E-glass roving or mat, with closed-cell, low-density foam in an engineered architecture. The patented core material has been in use for over two years in utility-class wind turbine blades and is undergoing qualification for use with additional 1.5 to 3.0 MW turbines that have blade 40 to 60-m long. The one-inch thick Tycor W saves an average of 0.5 lb/ft² and reduces resin use by 0.2 lb/ft² when compared to one-inch thick balsa wood. The company’s production process optimizes the material sheet sizes, improving kitting yield by as much as 10%.

Phase III Xlerator awards, a first for DOE, were created to help small businesses develop manufacturing processes to scale up production of new, proven technologies, creating new markets and jobs. WebCore will use the funding to expand production capacity at its Miamisburg, Ohio manufacturing facility and support ongoing development of enhancements to its Tycor technology platform.

WebCore

www.webcoreonline.com

Building a better turbine blade

Craig Collier/President, Collier Research Corp./Hampton Roads, Va./ hypersizer.com

A first objective on most any large design project is to get to the lightest weight possible. At NASA Langley Research Center, where I helped develop the code that later became HyperSizer, designs for spacecraft that include composites also have a zero failure-tolerance. Those projects must strike a critical balance between low weight and high strength. The same is true in the wind-power industry. Weight is of tremendous importance when designing wind-turbine blades because a lighter blade uses less material, it is easier to manufacture and transport, and has lower fatigue loads.
With failure rates still high for turbine blades (a Sandia survey of wind energy plants documented rates as high as 20%) and down-time costly and bad for business, blade designers and manufacturers must turn to the best practices for designing composites.
HyperSizer software, for example, is a composite optimization and structural sizing tool that works out-of- the-box with a wide variety of finite-element analysis (FEA) solvers. The tool couples with FEA in a feedback loop, searching for solutions that minimize weight while at the same time maximizing structural integrity and manufacturability. The software analyzes complex composite structures (it works with metals and other materials as well) by quickly evaluating designs in a ply-by-ply, and even finite element-by-element, manner. Optimizing all possible permutations for a composite laminate design gives engineers control of most every design detail.

Design improvements to wind-turbine blades should increase their efficiency and performance, trim the cost of harvesting the wind, and keep it competitive with fossil fuels. To increase the power generating capacity of a turbine, blades must grow in length (power captured by a turbine is proportional to the square of blade length). As they grow, blades must be kept as light as possible. Lighter weight means better performance, longer life, lower manufacturing costs, and shortened manufacturing cycles, all factors that enhance competitiveness in energy markets. With a legacy in aerospace, the software has helped users such as NASA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Bombardier, trim at least 20% of the weight from structures. The same can be true for wind-turbine blades.
Current utility-scale turbines are equipped with blades that range from
40 m (130 ft) to 90-m (300 ft) diameters. But there are prototype and concept blades on drawing boards that approach a staggering 145-m (475 ft) diameters. Design engineering issues such as structural strength, fatigue performance, buckling stability, blade stiffness, wing-tip deflection, and twist limits become increasingly important as turbine blades get longer. In simple terms, a blade must be as light as possible but stiff enough to maintain its aerodynamic shape and durable enough to carry wind loads without material failure. Furthermore, large blades must have a proper distribution of weight and stiffness to avoid instabilities produced by aeroelastic loads.

To optimize a blade’s design, the software begins where traditional FEA ends. Starting with a finite-element model and coupling seamlessly with FEA solvers, the software verifies structural integrity, predicts failure modes for all aeroelastic load cases, and identifies failure locations and loads, thereby achieving required safety factors. To resolve unacceptable safety factors, or simply to find a lighter weight design, it sizes (optimizes) a design by surveying millions of design-candidate dimensions and laminates. Setup, run time, and interpretation of results and initial redesign are typically accomplished in as little as four hours.
To evaluate what-if scenarios, trade studies, and sensitivities of a blade design, the software takes internal unit loads computed by FEA and determines an optimal combination of panel-and-beam concepts, cross-sectional dimensions, materials, and layups. To do so, it analyzes hundreds of different failure modes, achieving positive margins of safety (safety factor =1) for all analyses, all blade areas, and all load cases. The software also does panel trades. For example, a honeycomb or foam sandwich might be good for the shear web while a solid laminate might work best on a blade’s leading edge. The software can examine different layup stacks, as well as panel cross-section shapes.
The software eliminates manual calculations, offline spreadsheets, model re-meshing, and long running batch jobs. It also evaluates ply drop-off and ply-add patterns to help find the lightest laminate that meets strength requirements and with the fewest transitional regions.

HyperSizer includes features to evaluate blade areas with bolts (between blade sections) and adhesive joints (between the shear web and skin, for example). Analyses of bolt areas can prevent the common problem of overbuilding with heavier construction by optimizing padup thickness. Advanced analysis of adhesive joints looks at interlaminar shear and peel stress, delamination, and crack initiation.
A built-in library of materials can manage temperature and moisture-dependent properties, and can be customized with proprietary company and project data. The database includes metallics (isotropics), graphite and glass-fiber systems, sandwich cores (honeycomb, foam, syntactic), and hybrid laminates (plies of tape, fabric, and metallic foil). This extensive material list lets users analyze over 100 non-FEA based failure modes for all load cases. In addition, Sandia National Laboratories’ MSU/DOE Fatigue Database with 10,000 results on about 150 materials, can be imported to provide further capability.
In one application of the software, by NASA, it was the preliminary and final design tool (for flight certification) for projects such as the Ares V rocket and the astronaut’s composite crew module.
The economic and political climate is primed for growth in wind energy, but turbine performance, blade design, advanced materials, and quality in the field must reach the highest standards to help propel the industry forward. HyperSizer, with its composite analysis capabilities, has delivered great value to the aerospace industry and is ready to provide the same design assistance to the wind industry. It’s time for the wind industry to share in the benefits of the aerospace community’s accumulated expertise, without having to reinvent a composite wheel.

Free equipment for manufacturing composite blades

The manufacturer of large-scale and mobile fabric impregnators is looking for a turbine blade-manufacturing company interested in using, at no obligation, a fabric impregnator engineered to manufacture the blades. The equipment, from Magnum Venus Plastech, Kent, Wash., has been used to make large composite structures such as boat hulls, many for navies. “We believe with minor modifications to our MineSweeper system, we can easily accommodate the manufacturing needs for wind turbine blades,” says MVP President Tom Hedger.

“We would be willing to meet with a blade manufacturer, review their needs, and then design and put in place a pilot system at our cost in return for documentation and studies of the potential benefits of using a turnkey impregnator system. Preferably it would be for medium size blades,” he says. At the end of the test period, MVP would remove the equipment unless other arrangements are agreed upon.

The machines are highly mobile and can operate on a multi-axis basis. In numerous applications they process several thousands pounds of laminate per minute at a high glass-to-resin ratio. Capital costs are relatively low, says Hedger, and would allow for a far more rapid manufacturing of the composite with less risk and fewer consumables usually associated with vacuum infusion. Contact him at (253) 854-2660 or tomhedger@mvpind.com.

Software guides design of composite blades

Observers of the wind-energy industry agree that long term growth will require technical innovation to make wind power more competitive with other forms of energy. There is also a consensus that it is critical to improve performance by designing and manufacturing more efficient, reliable, and lighter blades that can reduce loads on main-turbine components and significantly lower total system costs.

However, as designers shape every larger blades (the longest now reach 150 to 200 ft), materials, design methods, and manufacturing processes are reaching their limits due to weight, cost, and reliability issues. The wind industry requires new design tools and manufacturing methods to rapidly develop and produce larger blade designs that are cost effective and reliable.

Vistagy Inc., Waltham, Mass., developer of FiberSIM software, says it provides a useful environment for composites engineering. It works with commercial 3D CAD systems and the company says it has been at the forefront of composites development and the aerospace industry for nearly 20 years. The software supports the complex design and manufacturing methods necessary to engineer durable and lightweight composite turbine blades. The software has several benefits for wind energy manufacturers, such as:

• Shorter design-to-manufacturing cycles so more design iterations can be performed

• An integrated approach to analysis and design to improve performance and reduce weight

• Early identification and resolution of part and tooling design issues for improved manufacturing accuracy and quality

• A seamless link from the 3D model to manufacturing

• Support for manufacturing automation

Early in a design cycle, the FiberSIM zone-based design method combines finite element analysis requirements for multiple zones with target laminates critical for designing and manufacturing a blade that will withstand load cases that represent the rigors of wind and weather.

Zone-based design automates the generation of the often several hundreds of plies and cores in a blade. The software also manages staggered ply transitions and overlaps between plies. A Variable Surface Offset feature creates laminate-over-core and B-surfaces to better engineer blade assemblies of skins, spars, and shear webs. Detailed ply designs are captured complete with design and manufacturing data, including laminate, rosette, ply, and core data. Manufacturing data, such as technical drawings, cut files, and laser positioning are then exported for a variety of manual and automated tasks.