Core materials in blades
Core is one of the primary materials used to construct blades.
Ultimately, it is the designer who specifies what type and density of core to use. This they do in parallel to specifying the resin, fibre and overall design itself. Consequently, the market sees many variations of blade bom's (bill of materials), unique to a given OEM and/or blade producer.
PVC and balsa have been the original design materials, with PET more recently and now firmly established is a third option. Due to the design flexibily available, bom's can feature 1, 2 or all 3 material types.
Typically, designers will use higher density (e.g. Probalsa 150, PN200, PY250) and lower density (H60, H80, PY105, PN115) grades in various areas of the blade shell and spar/web.
As a building block, Diab offers the designer PET and PVC grades in various densities, as well as balsa.
In addition to providing design properties, the core is also used as a processing aid during the blade infusion process, which is the primary technology used today. In this function, the core is perforated, cut, grooved and kitted to provide to enable it not only to conform to the blade mould, but to allow the transfer of air and resin during the manufacturing process. This is a value-added function of core which can effectively reduce the total cost of blade manufacture by, for example speeding up the resin infusion process and/or reducing the amount of resin used. Furthermore, it can also add benefits to the designer.
Diab offers a comprehensive range of finishing, kitting and technical service products to help customers achieve this.
