Carbon or diolen lay up?


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PIPKIN
PIPKIN
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Hi

I'm working with a group of A Level students who are building an electric powered race car.  The body skin will be in a composite material, eithe Diolen or Carbon, we will be using a hand lay up process with a pigmented gel coat.

We have purchased GC50 gel coat and appropriate catalyst, epoxy EL2 laminating resin and AT30 slow hardner.

Advice would be appreciated with regard to the selection of the reinforcement cloth and please remeber we do have a tight budget.  Consideration is a 300gsm diolen woven cloth, if so how many layers would we require considering that it will only be a skin to a stuctural chassi.

Alternatively, if we used the Black stuff carbon fibre 2/2 twill 3K how many layers would we require for rigid body skin.

Weight and cost are the key factors, is it worth going for carbon over diolen for our application.

Cheers

Paul
Dravis
Dravis
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---- eeeeeee ---  Double posting Smile


Using a combination of Diolen and the very cheap "black Stuff" will definitely give you the stiffest and strongest "body skin" for the weight.

Also use vacuum bagging or infusion, to ensure a good fibre to resin ratio. = low weight ..

A layer of GC50 will make the skin heavier than needed, i suggest 2-k automotive paint on top of infused panels...

With a little care in reinforcing, curving and maybe "corrugating" the "skin" you probably only need 3 layers, and in non stressed areas you can probably make do with one layer of black stuff and one of Diolen

For my race-bike fairings I use one layer of 320 gsm satin weave CF at 45 deg to one layer of 200 gsm twill Carbonfibre, Infused or vac bagged with automotive 2-comp paint on top.

Reducing weight is  crucial in electric car racing... but you already know that ...  BigGrin  

Good luck!!


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Edited 10 Years Ago by Dravis
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