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Technology
Straight-Fiber Composite.
Heavy, expensive, limited.
Today parts are built by stacking straight-fiber layers at different angles to balance the properties at all directions, but structures are never loaded equally in all directions
Steered Fiber Composite.
Not possible before.
It would be far more efficient to design/manufacture by steering fibers to reinforce critical areas.
This results in lighter parts produced at lower cost, while paving the way for true industrial automation in composites.
50 years of academic literature highlight why fiber steering is the way we should be designing and manufacturing using composites, but manufacturing such structures without defects was impossible, until now….
World’s first only defect-free steering technology, enabling production of fiber steered structures at industrial scale
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Lightest Structures Possible
Lightest Structures Possible
Aligning the fibers with the primary load path of a structure leads to unparalleled structural efficiency.
Best to illustrate the structural benefits with an example: assume the lower wing skin of an aircraft.
The wing is loaded in bending and ideally most of the fibers are running along its length – however the necessity for multiple large access holes, results in cut fibers and large stress concentrations. This requires significant additional material to reinforce the neighboring areas.
Representative structure (wing skin) found in defense and civil aircraft
Plot highlighting stress concentrations (red)
By steering the fibers around the holes, the stress concentrations in these areas are eliminated, leading to a drastically lighter structure, when compared to the existing straight fiber design.
This also positively impacts the production cost, as significantly less carbon layers are needed (less raw material, less layup time).
RTS tapes deposited around a hole
Laminate | Load (kN) | Mass (kg) | Tsai-Wu failure criterion | Load / Mass (kN/kg) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quasi-isotropic (24 plies) | 358 | 3.71 | 1.001 | 96.5 |
| RTS (8 plies) | 358 | 1.30 | 0.8969 | 275 |
RTS delivers up to 65% weight reduction compared to conventional laminates — same strength, one-third the material.
The optimal fiber orientation, at every layer, at every point of a structure. This is the power of RTS. Because with fiber steering the design space is drastically expanded, and a lighter/stronger result will always be achieved vs straight fiber.
ICOMAT - RTS
65% reduced weight
10x Faster Production
10x Faster Production
Steering Enables Forming, the Key to Industrial Rates
Fiber Steering is key to unlock manufacturing of complex composite parts at industrial production rates. The best way to achieve this is a forming/stamping workflow (high rate / low cost / automated workflow, validated in automotive).
However, unlike metals which stretch in all directions, carbon fiber and composites cannot stretch in the fiber direction. This has been the main bottleneck for stamping/forming of complex composite parts. Fiber Steering adds an additional degree of freedom, enabling to pre-steer the fibers in a 2D preform, which can then be stamped without forming defects.
O1
Forming Analysis
O2
2D Preform Production
O3
Stamping or Forming
O4
Complex 3D Parts Optimized Fiber Paths
By optimising both for structural and forming performance, RTS provides:
the lightest structures possible, produced in an automated workflow and at a fraction of the cost,
compared to the state-of-the-art.
Lay Flat + Form
