The University of Auckland

Project #97: Roll forming of composite sheets

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Description:

The project will be carried out in collaboration with an Auckland-based company. Roll forming is a manufacturing technique where a sttrip of material is fed through a series of profiled pairs of rolls, normally arranged in tandem. It is an extreely versatile process to manufacture profiled sections and is widely used in the sheet metal industry. The researchers at the Centre for Advanced Composite Materials has extended the technique (with an international patent) to other materials, such as thermoplastic composite sheets. It is also possible to use this technique with semi-cured (tacky) thermoset materials. Roll forming can produce sections at a speed that is an order of magnitude higher than those of other common processes like pultrusion. It also has the ability to produce in a continuous or semi-continuous manner.

This project will aim at producing one component of the boat-sail in a fast and competitive manner so that the export market could be expanded. The methodology will involve material characterisation and laboratory experiments on a roll forming machine that already exists in the CACM laboratory. The experimental parameters will have to be varied to suitable the suitable processing window.

Type:

Undergraduate

Outcome:

A novel process to manufacture profiled composite parts in a fast, continuous/semi-continuous manner. It is envisaged to increase the export potential of the NZ industry.

Prerequisites

Mechanics of Materials 2

Specialisations

Categories

Supervisor

Team

Allocated (Not available for preferences)

Lab

Lab allocations have not been finalised