The evolution towards eco superior products is also growing within the composite industry. This is further proven by the success of the Swiss company Bcomp Ltd. The natural fibre company will present its reinforcing powerRibs technology and a new technical flax fabric line for the first time at COMPOSITES EUROPE 2013.

Striking benefits of natural fibres:

Natural fibre composites have gained significant attention over the last couple of years. However, these novel materials struggle to establish themselves at a large scale in the composites industry, despite their outstanding specific mechanical properties. This is partly due to their short history with uncertainties regarding the natural fibre composite’s long-term behavior.

Since its founding in 2011, Bcomp has been focusing on understanding the specificity of natural fibers and their composites, and developing corresponding solutions bringing striking benefits – in addition to the lower ecological footprint – to the end product.

ampliTex  light range – world premiere at COMPOSITES EUROPE:

As technical textile, flax is a composite material, a source of inspiration to designers as they push the boundaries of contemporary furniture; used as a structural solution for new-generation goods. Bcomp as a natural fibre specialist is using the advantages of flax with its smart technologies in their materials for the production of highly performing skis and snowboards, ski poles, bicycle parts and frames, skate decks, car bodies, design parts and music instruments.

The strong need of the water sport and bike industry inspired us to develop the lightweight range. The ampliTex light products are made with a new low-twist yarn for a maximum performance. While regular natural fibre yarns have a high twist, thus a low surface coverage at a given weight, this tape-like flax roving allows the design of fabrics with a very low fabric areal weight.

When pressure is applied during processing, the fibres of the roving are further spread, filling the open space between the roving of the fabric. In addition, the low twist results in a great alignment of the fibres, increasing the strength of the final composite part by 10-20% vs. a part made from standard flax yarn.

These ampliTex light fabrics are ideal for replacing light glass fibre fabrics traditionally used in composites construction, cutting weight of the required reinforcement material by up to 50%. In combination with carbon composites, they offer a unique opportunity to simultaneously increase the strength and the damping properties.

Boosting the flexural stiffness:

The powerRibs technology (pat. pend.), a novel structural flax fibre composite boosting the flexural stiffness of plates and flexural strength of tubes. In both cases, the performance can be increased by up to 250%, while adding only 5-20% in weight vs. a standard flax fibre composite structure. Despite having a Young’s modulus significantly lower than carbon fibres, the density of flax fibres is about 30 % lower than the one of carbon.

This is a great advantage for applications designed for flexural stiffness, thus strongly influenced by the products wall thickness: for plates of equal weight, the flax composites plate will be significantly thicker. Locally enhanced by the local ribs, this high thickness will lead to flexural plate stiffness comparable to the carbon composite plate.

This technology uses the limited compressibility of natural fibre yarns with specific composite processing methods to design reinforced thin-walled structures with meso-scale ribs, which are tailorable in thickness, direction and density.

This approach requires a relatively thick yarn with the right amount of twist: too little and the low compression resistance during processing will lead to a collapse of the ribs, too much and the misalignment of the will lead to a decrease of the mechanical properties of the resulting composite. Figure 3 shows an example of the ampliTex ±45° power ribs fabric and a shell element for a transportation part with the power ribs.

There are numerous applications for this material in industries such as sports and leisure, consumer electronics and mobility. Bcomp is currently working on several projects with different partners to develop highly cost-effective shell elements with exceptional stiffness-to-weight ratios, aimed at the use in applications ranging from laptop casings to body parts of electro-mobiles.

Eco superior company:

It all started in 2003, when Cyrille Boinay with his carbon fiber skis (DrakeBoinay) stepped up to the two EPFL doctorates Christian Fischer and Julien Rion. While the synthetic fibers where lightweight and robust, they provided too much spryness and disturbance on the snow, which the researchers went about to change.

During this process, they discovered the damping characteristics of natural fibers and used these advantages for the development of two patented technologies, which they turned into a company 8 years later with the founding of Bcomp Ltd. Today Bcomp is a team of 8 highly motivated fellows, developing different products and projects within the exciting world of natural fibers.