NSF Award
9360007
9360007 Schmanski Thermoset polymer composites have been used as building materials for many years and are successfully used in the construction of marine vessels, aircraft, buildings, and space vehicles. Pultrusion is one well known process that is used throughout industry to manufacture composites. Composites can be reinforced with fiberglass, carbon, or other fibers to create high strength, light weight, damage resistant materials. The predictable high strength characteristics of the composites, allows thin sections and these are used in combination with other materialls, such as insulation or sound blocking medium, creating sandwich type building material. The material used with composites is often manufactured thhru an extrusion process. This requires expensive, labor intensive operations to create the final construction materials from composites and extruded material. We propose to develop a manufacturing process that will combine pultrusion and extrusion processes into one operation. This will eliminate the expensive, labor intensive operatin required for fabricating two materials into the combined building material. This research will concentrate on creating an extrusion process that can simultaneously be utilized as part of the pultrusion process. The extruded member will be integral to the pultrusion die and will act as the mandrel as it is formed ahead ofthe pultrusion die. The result will be a building materials that has dual materials makeup without the expensive fabrication process. This project would result in a sophisticated, highly effecient and economical building material that would have multiple uses both indoors and in outside environments.
