Basalt Fiber Uses and Applications
Wind Energy
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Blade makers who are struggling to meet burgeoning demands are looking to new materials to help raise overall productivity, reduce cycle time, and cut costs. Producers are working with customers to develop new products that reduce weight, improve mechanicals, and deliver “more blades per unit time”. Polyester and vinyl ester suppliers are working on new formulations with improved mechanical properties.
Glass suppliers have responded to the carbon-fiber competition for making longer and lighter blades. Basalt manufacturers like MR Basalt offer basalt continuous rovings and fabric that is said to be nearly 30% stronger, 15-20% stiffer, and 8-10% lighter than the E-glass. This gives blade makers a less costly solution than carbon fiber for blades 40-m long or longer. |
Automotive
The Geneva Auto Show shaped up to be a major enviro-fest, and one of the most interesting vehicles on the floor was from the German design and engineering firm EDAG. Called the Light Car-Open Source Concept, this innovative, five-door hatchback features a host of technologies that are still in the early stages of development. Kicking off its roster of "open source" elements, EDAG's electric urbocar features exterior panels made of basalt fiber, a 100-percent recyclable material created by processing crushed rock. In addition to being available in near-limitless quantities, the manufacturer of the industrialized form of this material claims that it's also lighter and less costly to make than aluminum or carbon-fiber yet has practically the same strength properties as conventional materials. Besides potential automotive applications, basalt fiber is being used to make rotors for wind generators.
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In the automotive industry, Azdel Inc., GE Advanced Materials and glass-fiber producer PPG Industries, developed VolcaLite, a thermoformable composite that combines polypropylene (PP) and long chopped basalt fiber. The company claims that the basalt/PP system offers acoustic absorption properties, low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), and a high strength-to-weight ratio, providing good ductility. Although initially targeted for auto headliners, (made 50 percent thinner than conventional systems), there are clearly many other applications for this.
Heat- and sound-insulating material for the production of automotive mufflers, panels, heat-insulating layers, screens, plastics; reinforcement material for the production of brake shoes and clutch plates, structural plastics, incombustible composite materials, tyres cords and other materials.
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Sporting Goods
Mervin Manu, a Seattle, WA based company, currently makes a number of different snowboard models that incorporate a basalt fabric instead of the traditional fiberglass. The boards contain a proprietary wooden core with a basalt fiber lining on each side that results in lighter, stiffer snowboards. Such a board was first on exhibit at the 2005 JEC Composites Show.
"Mervin Manufacturing home of Lib Tech, GNU, Roxy and Bent Metal is a leading designer and manufacturer of snowboarding, NASing, surfing and skateboarding products built at the world’s most environMENTAL factory by people who ride them." |
Construction
Chemical resistance of basalt fiber in the alkali liquors allows it to be used in reinforcement of concrete structures where the impact of moisture, salt solutions and alkali environment of concrete leads to the corrosion of metallic reinforcement.
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Ship Building
Based on effective composite material failure criteria and property limited degradation model, axial compressive ultimate strength of composite laminated stiffened panels are analyzed by nonlinear laminated degenerated 3D finite element analysis, which is based on incremental continuum-based updated Lagrangian formulation. Comparison between analytical solutions and test results in this article indicates that this article provides an effective and practical method to evaluate the axial compressive ultimate strength of composite laminated stiffened panels. Using this method, ultimate strength of hull girders made of continuous basalt fiber composite materials are analyzed .
Comparing the results,it can be seen that the ship hull in basalt fiber composite materials has equivalent longitudinal ultimate strength to S-2 glass fiber composite materials, basalt fiber composite material could replace the S-2 glass fiber composite materials used in shipbuilding engineering. The gist for building ship with basalt fiber composite materials was provided by this paper. |
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