Natural Fibre Prepregs

At Composites Evolution, we have unrivalled experience in the development and production of natural fibre prepregs and sustainable composites, and our technical support team is on-hand to show how these materials can be readily adopted without the need for significant changes to your existing composite component production processes.

Now, we’ve teamed up with Bcomp Ltd to combine our high-performance Evopreg® resin systems and natural fibre prepregging expertise with their award-winning ampliTex™ range of flax reinforcements. The result is an exciting new range of Evopreg® ampliTex™ flax-epoxy prepregs, which offer outstanding performance for component and tooling applications.

Products

Evopreg® ampliTex™ for component applications

Our in-house formulated Evopreg® EPC epoxy component prepregs are designed for a range of cure temperatures with high performance, ease of layup and excellent surface finish.

Evopreg® EPC epoxy component prepregs can be consolidated by vacuum bag/oven, autoclave or press moulding and are designed for a range of applications including automotive, motorsport, sporting goods and general industrial. Resin content, resin bias and tack levels can all be tailored to your requirements.

Evopreg® ampliTex™ + powerRibs™

Using the Evopreg® ampliTex™ + powerRibs™ system, it is possible to match the stiffness of traditional carbon-fibre components, while also reducing component weight.

powerRibs™ are a natural fibre reinforcement grid, designed to provide a significant increase in stiffness for only a minimum increase in weight. Provided as a dry reinforcement supported on a lightweight veil, they are incorporated into a layup which combines standard Evopreg® ampliTex™ prepreg with a specially-tailored resin-rich variant. This method allows the powerRibs™ to fully wet-out, but avoids the risk of forming resin-rich areas along the gridlines.

Characteristics

Evopreg® ampliTex™ – Carbon Hybrids

Evopreg® ampliTex™ flax-epoxy prepregs can be combined with traditional carbon fibre-epoxy prepregs to produce a high performance hybrid offering the benefits of both materials.

By replacing carbon bulking plies with flax, it is possible to produce a “thin sandwich” structure that retains the bending stiffness of an all-carbon laminate, whilst also delivering the weight reduction, vibration damping… and reduced environmental impact, which flax offers.

Characteristics

• Excellent noise and vibration damping properties
• Lower weight than the corresponding all-carbon equivalent
• Maintains the carbon fibre aesthetic
• Safer failure mode – does not break into small sharp fragments

Evopreg® ampliTex™ hybrid tooling

The carbon-flax-carbon sandwich concept can also be applied to tooling.

Here, it is possible to replace the majority of the carbon bulking plies with flax, whilst still maintaining the dimensional stability you’d expect from a traditional all-carbon tool.

Characteristics

• Excellent surface finish
• High dimensional stability (due to the very closely matched thermal expansion coefficients of flax and carbon)
• Reduced tool weight