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New Fiberglass-Faced Foam Boards and Aircraft Use

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jonnycowboy

Member
Joined
Nov 26, 2014
Messages
12
Location
Montreal, Canada
Hi all,
I've been researching building a Wainfan Facetmobile copy - NASA PAV version with the flat foam/honeycomb panels. In order to reduce costs, I have been looking at facing blue DOW foam with fiberglass (hand-laid).

However the research I've done identified two new products that could be interesting for use, namely construction-grade fiberglass-faced 1/2 foam panels. The two I've found so far are:
  • IKO IKOTherm Covershield: 1/2" poly-iso foam faced on both sides with fiberglass, 90 psi compressive strength.
  • Firestone ISOGARD HD: 1/2" poly-iso foam faced on only one side with fiberglass, 120 psi compressive strength.
Both of these boards come in 4'x8' sheets and weight around 11 lbs each. Cost is around 15-20$/sheet.

Links:

As I said I want to build a Facetmobile with foam-core or honeycomb construction as detailed in Wainfan's PAV report. I think using these panels, doubled-up (epoxy them together as a 1" nominal thickness) as the structural walls, along with a single-layer outer skin (top & bottom) could be a lot cheaper than using the aircraft grade sheets of honeycomb found at TEKLAM (~600-1000$/sheet).

Poly-iso foam in particular cannot be hot-wired, which is a disadvantage but it can be routed (which I would do with a CNC panel router for this project).

Any comments on these boards? Good idea or bad? I'd use a build-up at the intersecting joints with foam and fiberglass in a L-flange shape.

thanks
Jonathan
 
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