Diab has supplied its foam sandwich core to make a pleasure yacht with improved stiffness and reduced weight.
The material was used by India-based Fine Hulls, which uses computational design tools to make hydrokinetic turbine ducts, hull forms for hydrodynamic testing in labs, and glass fiber products using single skin or sandwich construction.
The yacht, which is made entirely of sandwich composite construction, incorporates quadriaxial fibers with HM80 Divinycell core for the hull, superstructure, and inner deck, while the aft deck module with deck and seating is integrally molded as a single unit in the same vacuum infusion process.
‘It has been proven in our experience that sandwich composite fully taps not only the advantages of strong, lightweight construction with higher stiffness, but also provides better product homogeneity, as compared with single skin manual molding,’ said Professor V Anantha Subramanian, owner of Fine Hulls. ‘There is definitely a higher initial investment by way of vacuum pumps, consumables. However, there are long-term benefits which will pay for themselves in the long run.’
This story uses material from Diab, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
