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> I have a customer who manufactures wind turbines. In the layup schedule for the blades he specifies Soric. I would love to hear what
> you would suggest he should be using?
Whatever it takes to perform the job. If Soric works for him, and it obviously does, fine, then there's nothing wrong with it. (Wind turbine blades don't need to be extremely lightweight if I remember correctly)
For many applications where weight doesn't matter all that much bulking materials like Soric or Coremat which soak up a lot of resin are perfectly acceptable and are a great improvement over using a full laminate to achieve the same strength.
While "shitty" might have been a little strong, I was merely trying to point out the not-so-stellar weight and density properties of cork and Soric in the final laminate, and reminding people that there are other options. There have been a few comments here and in other threads of people wanting to use cork with carbon. This is perfectly ok, do whatever you want. I do remember the carbon shortages a few years ago though, and using carbon (which used to be quite pricey and sometimes hard to get) with materials originally introduced to the polyester industry still bothers me a little. In the past when something was made of carbon this implied very light and very strong, so I still tend to advise people to use lightweight core materials. The additional costs didn't matter much in the past, but obviously they do now since carbon has become cheaper, and visible carbon is in high demand
Cork does have a few benefits, like its vibration dampening properties, it's just heavy (relatively speaking) compared to many other core materials.
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