Asteria Aerospace, an Indian company specializing in mini-sized versatile unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has made use of DIAB’s Divinycell H foam core as the sandwich core of the craft’s composite body.
Asteria’s flagship product is the CYGNUS A10, a mini UAV designed from the ground up for military and civilian surveillance applications. CYGNUS A10 flies autonomously from takeoff to landing and carries a high-resolution daylight/infrared camera for aerial observation. Its airframe is constructed primarily out of high-performance composite materials using Divinycell H foam core as the sandwich core. Divinycell H is used in the manufacturing of all major parts, including the fuselage, wing and empennage assemblies.
‘Asteria wanted a thin core material with a high strength-to-weight ratio and low resin uptake to make the parts strong and stiff yet lightweight,’ said Dattaraj Nachnolkar at DIAB India. The DIAB Divinycell H range is suitable for hand layup and vacuum bagging processes and can also be used in thermoforming, which simplifies the process of shaping the core to complex curvatures of aerodynamic surfaces.
This story is reprinted from material from DIAB, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
