Aerospace Composites

Much has been done recently to push forward the development of pilot less aircraft, known as Unmanned Arial Vehicle systems (UAVs). The obvious potential for UAVs lies in their surveillance and monitoring capabilities, being particularly useful for such purposes as border control observation.

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VULTURE, an unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured in South Africa, is a fully automated launch, flight and recovery.

It is also one of the few international UAV systems that are completely self-contained with the capability to launch from 10-ton truck within 30 minutes. The structure of the VULTURE aircraft is modular, consisting of two wing halves, fuselage, detachable tail boom, tail plane and nose module, which are all produced, from composite Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) using hand lamination and vacuum techniques.

The two component epoxy resin system cures in a polyadditive process, which demands accurate dosing and mixing at a ratio of 100:38 to achieve the desired material properties.

A DOPAG ELDO-MIX 101 gear pump type metering and mixing system was installed to process and dispense the resin system. The ELDO-MIX 101 is a compact bench top machine that uses precision gear pumps with defined gear volumes to meter the two components in the correct mixing ratio. Output rates of up to 1.2 liters per minute are possible and the mixing ratio is easily adjustable to suit the application.

UAVs are the future in aerospace and they rely exclusively on equipment of the highest quality with innovative technologies to remain leaders in this field.