Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Technical Review
    Vol. 57 No. 1 (2020)   New Products & Technologies
    Technical Papers

    Derivation of Low-cost and High-speed Forming of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic

    YUKIO TAKEUCHI
    KOSUKE IKEDA
    WATARU NISHIMURA
    YUSUKE YANASE
    KAZUTOSHI YOKOO

    Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) is used for purposes which require high specific intensity, but the materials and molding for CFRP are relatively expensive in general and molding takes a long time. This research applies the pultrusion method utilized in Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastic (GFRP) to CFRP, aiming to achieve low-cost and high-speed molding. In addition, we conducted a simulation of the viscosity distribution of resin inside the mold in order to extract the optimum molding conditions with the minimum number of prototypes. As a result, we successfully molded a satisfactory CFRP prismatic pipe after only 2 prototypes.