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Two Questions on Layup of Doors

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wsimpso1

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 18, 2003
Messages
11,359
Location
Saline Michigan
Ok, I am trying to plan out just how the doors will go together. A little bit back I started a thread talking about bending stiffness to keep the seals seated in flight, and it will require quite a bit of stuff. Carbon fiber over foam cores is beginning to look like a reasonable approach for the doors themselves.

I am building the female mold for the entire canopy structure and the two doors. I plan to put in fences of foam and release tape over them to set the boundaries. The doors will be compound curved... I am also planning on heat forming the cores ahead of time, along with some more foam sections to keep the foam cores in place as the bag pulls down. I am currently planning on vacuum bagging this part in one big layup with a slow hardener.

Which brings me to my question. How should I handle all of that unidirectional material at corners. On each side of the core, I will either be using several plies UNI glass tape or 12 or so plies of Carbon tape. Neither one wants to follow around the corners. I have figured that I will probably have to overlap plies at the corners and then bridge across the corner with a short ply too. This method will build up doubly thick at the corners and I figure that I can thin the cores by that much in the corners, but is this good practice? Is there another prefered method for getting the requisite amount of material into the doors?

Second question. I have never worked with the unidirectional carbon tape that is held together with a binder that disolves in epoxy. Is this stuff appropriate for my doors? Or should I stick with Uni cloth in either carbon or glass?

Any comments or experience will be helpful... Thanks,

Billski
 
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