process Mapretec: a new production process for the wind energy sector The usage of fibre-reinforced plastics is gaining in importance worldwide and is a continually growing market - for example in large components like wind turbine blades or aeroplane wings. However, it is in essence still a bespoke manufacture rather than serial production. Rotor blades in particular are increasing in size while the production remains predominantly manual. By Lars Ischtschuk, Development Engineer Saertex GmbH & Co. KG Jan-Hendrik Ohlendorf, Institut für integrierte Produktentwicklung (BIK) University of Bremen T he "human factor" has a significant influence on the layup quality of sensitive technical textiles (mainly NCF, non-crimp fabrics). Failures like fibre undulations and wrinkles can occur in the manual layup process and will definitely reduce the mechanical properties of the resulting part. This decrease is compensated by a higher safety factor, which results in oversized parts that are heavier than necessary. sense, it is not practicable for the rest of the blade because of its complex 3D geometry. This complexity means that the current automation processes do not function, or only partly, and are far too expensive. A new and innovative approach was considered in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy funded project mapretec: the two-dimensional automated layup of single NCF layers to a multiple Automation technology The currently available automation concepts for the manufacture of wind turbine blades are limited to the automated tape laying of the highly stressed rotor blade spar caps. While this concept is promising and makes Fig. 1: Steps of the transformation process 30 jec composites magazine / No90 June - July 2014 stack followed by the forming of the final contour into a 3D preform. The advantage of this process is that the preform processing time is significantly decreased compared to conventional processes, with a manageable complexity of the automation technology. The plain layup of the single layers to a 2D preform is done on a morph field