Toray Rapidly Developing New Targeted Performance Aerospace Prepregs

Toray Rapidly Developing New Targeted Performance Aerospace Prepregs

On November 30, Toray announced that it has developed a next-generation aerospace carbon fiber composite product (CFRP) with both high flame retardancy and strong mechanical properties in a short period of time, relying on material informatics technology, which is expected to be promoted in aircraft, automotive, general industry and other applications.

Materials Informatics is a field of study that applies informatics principles to materials science and engineering to improve the understanding, use, selection and development of materials, with the goal of achieving high-speed, robust collection, management and analysis of a wide range of materials data to reduce the time and risk required to develop and produce new materials.

In addition to mechanical properties, CFRP is inferior to metals in terms of flame retardancy and electrical conductivity, which need to be compensated for in practical applications by other materials and processes. However, finding the optimum balance between flame retardancy and mechanics requires extensive experimentation and inevitably long development cycles.

Toray has been using big data and electronic technology to improve the competitiveness of its products. This time, together with Tohoku University, we have developed materials with targeted properties by means of reverse analysis using material informatics technology.

This approach significantly reduced the number of experiments and shortened the development cycle, resulting in the design of a matrix resin for CFRP with high flame retardancy and strong mechanical properties, and the development of a corresponding carbon fibre prepreg in a short period of time.

The product's compression strength and heat resistance are comparable to those of existing aerospace composite products, but the Heat Release Rate (HRR) has been reduced by 35%.

According to Toray, this method of reverse analysis can also be used to improve the thermal and electrical conductivity of the material and promote the development of high-performance carbon fibre prepregs for a wide range of applications such as aircraft, automotive and general industry