New PU system for pultrusion composites fabrication

According to the company, this solution enables efficient fabrication of strong, tough, and durable composites used in industrial and domestic applications, such as in window manufacturing, building profiles, electrical infrastructure and civil engineering.

Jeff Martin, CEO of Martin Pultrusion Group, Inc., Oakwood Village, OH, USA, said: “Major OEMs are looking to urethane resins to permit them to achieve higher mechanical properties when competing with traditional materials, like aluminium. The lower viscosity of urethane resins permit higher glass loadings than either polyester or vinyl ester resins. This leads to pultruded urethane composites to have flexural modulus properties which approach the properties of aluminium.” He also stated: “Voraforce polyurethane pultrusion resin showed excellent processing behaviour as it allows especially low pull forces during the processing on our equipment.”

“During our tests with pultruded polyurethane, we discovered superior toughness, excellent fibre wetting, fast reaction and low emission properties at a significantly higher pultrusion speed,” said Guido Bramante, research scientist at Dow’s composite group. “Analysing C-shaped pultruded profiles, our research team has found a significant cost savings potential in raw material, as compared to unsaturated polyester, which makes this a really attractive offering to composite fabricators.”

Polyurethane systems for pultrusion from Dow are available initially in Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. The availability for US markets will be announced at a later stage, said the company.