JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #119 - Supplement lnnovation report - 27

Paris, France
March 6-7-8, 2018

Composite rail door
Penso has designed and manufactured a
composite rail door leaf assembly suitable
for London Underground, improving the
reliability and maintenance of the original aluminium component. The door has
been designed for the Jubilee Line, and
also fits the Northern Line.

placed from inside the carriage and does
not require removal of the whole door.
Penso's press forming technology also enables the manufacturing cycle time to be
reduced significantly to just 45 minutes,
making it more economically viable to
produce in volume.

Penso's unique train door design has a
mass weight saving of more than 10kg,
providing a number of benefits to the
overall train and has an extended life service of up to 40 years. The lightweight rail
door enables faster opening and closing
times, resulting in more people able to
be transported per hour. The weight saving per door will create an overall lighter
train, leading to less track and wheel wear
and the running costs and energy usage
would be lowered.
The door is designed to have a new window cassette which can be fitted in less
than one hour. An additional benefit of
Penso's window design is that if it becomes damaged, the window can be re-

Penso decided to use a foam core in the
train door design; this will not only improve noise ingress through the door
aperture, but a significant reduction in
the risk of water penetration too. Other
materials selected include carbon fibre
and glass fibre; contributing to the mass
weight saving and a better structural performance. The use of phenolic materials
has also enabled the door to successfully
pass Fire, Smoke and Toxicity (FST) testing to meet the stringent deep tunnel requirements of BS 6853 Category 1A.
The door is engineered to have better dimensional stability. Due to the door leaf
being a completely enclosed part manu-

Finalist: Penso (UK)

factured in one pressing process, it has a
greater dimensional accuracy than the existing aluminium honeycomb sandwich
assemblies.

Breakthrough in railways:
the renovation of the ice
The ICE is the prestigious fastest train of
the Deutsche Bahn fleet. The company presented the new version 4 last year. There are
over 66 trains of the version 3 still in use as
the main passenger railway transportation
system in Germany. This fleet was introduced in the year 2000 and it´s passenger
wagons are now being renovated. In order to
meet modern comfort standards, the interior will receive an upgrade as for instance in
the passengers entertainment and air conditioning. The additional weight for the new
equipment had to be compensated by sophisticated light-weight solutions. With this
development, a light-weight flooring system
was created to keep the weight input at a minimum. Importantly, the novel system needs
to fulfill the fire safety regulations EN 455452 which will be valid from 2018 on.

The entire floor system with an average panel
size of 2400 x 1200 mm will be renewed to
exchange heavy plywood with light-weight
GFRP panels based on SAERTEX LEO®
materials. Due to this non-crimp fabric based
material system with integrated coating, it
was possible to manufacture all sandwich
panels in a vacuum infusion process using
Vinylester resin. Importantly, the production process incorporates reusable silicon
membrane technologies as offered by Alan
Harper Composites. This technique was implemented and adjusted by SMT to allow an
enhanced process with increased output, to
gain higher reproducibility and quality value
but also to save material costs. This has resulted in a competitive production of high end
composites with minimum material waste.
The use of this composite material inside the

Finalist: Saertex GmbH & Co
(Germany)
Partners: Forster System-MontageTechnik GmbH (Germany), Alan Harper
(UK)

new floor in ICE3 has achieved highest fire
safety standards, 98% less flame progress, 57x
less smoke generation and 12x higher tensile
strength compared to HLU Lay-up solutions
which were in competition.

N° 119 supplement - Innovation Report

/ jec composites magazine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #119 - Supplement lnnovation report