LEO^® SYSTEM FOR TENRYU COMPOSITES CO., LTD.

Tenryu Composites Co., LTD. manufactures vehicle parts for trains and airplanes. The company is based in Gifu, Japan.

THE IDEA

Today, more and more railroad projects are realized based on BS and EN standards. With this background Tenryu was looking for a solution that would allow them to produce structural lightweight parts in infusion process and let them meet the EN 45545 instead of using the hand lay-up method.
In order to achieve these objectives, Tenryu Composites Co., LTD. looked for a partner to produce structural lightweight parts in infusion process. Tenryu sought to achieve technical benefits such as weight reduction, same stiffness and for example reproducible part qualities.
 
TECHNICAL BENEFITS

1. weight reduction (30% lighter compared to filled resin)
2. same stiffness at 50% reduced thickness compared to part of phenol
3. reduced labor time for product production and painting preparation
4. reproducible part qualities
5. EN 45.545 (HL3 for R1) for painted part

REINFORCING THIS IDEA

Traditionally Tenryu was using phenolic matrices to satisfy the rail industry’s FST requirements. Compared to other resins phenolic is of very poor mechanical properties, for which reason laminates had to be very thick to avoid deformations of the product. Occasionally even stiffeners were added to the part. Furthermore surface preparation for the following painting process required very high labor intensity due to phenol’s specific chemistry. Accordingly Tenryu’s goal was to generate technically sophisticated products, that are benefiting from the infusion process advantages (weight saving, process stability, reduced labor, reproducible quality) rather than usage of traditional materials such as phenolic or highly filled resins.

The LEO system fulfilled this “specification”, for which reason Tenryu and SAERTEX begun their collaboration.

SAERTEX and Tenryu started to elaborate commonly on FRP solutions in numerous test series for meeting the rail market’s needs for FRP parts, specifically in regard to mechanical and FST requirements.

THE SUCCESS STORY

Thanks to LEO’s specific protection layer, resin, and fiber Tenryu is enabled to manufacture rail parts on a very high FST level on a constant and reproducible quality basis. The infusion process allows the attainment of high fiber volume fractions along with surfaces easy to process for the following painting step. Today Tenryu manufactures lightweight painted structural parts with a wide range of thicknesses (monolithic) that can fulfill EN 45545 (HL3) requirements. It was exactly what Tenryu was looking for.