Ready-to-Use Sandwich Cores for the Airbus
Production of ROHACELL^® SHAPES starts up at the Darmstadt site

Checking dimensions: Geometric specifications can be checked directly on the milling machine with the help of the measuring arm. Bernd Pfeiffer, head of the Plexiglas Business Unit (extreme left in the photo), sees how this is done at the opening of the ROHACELL® SHAPES plant in Darmstadt. Uwe Lang, product manager for ROHACELL® SHAPES (second from left), explains the process.

Solutions to Customers is one of Degussa's guiding principles. Customers are sold not merely products but equipped with complete solutions. And the production of ROHACELL^® SHAPES at the new plant at the Darmstadt site, which was recently officially inaugurated, is a textbook example of this.

ROHACELL^® is a product line of the Plexiglas Business Unit and produces rigid foams for use in, for example, airplane wings, loading doors, and landing-gear doors of aircraft. Until two years ago, the material was supplied almost exclusively in the form of sheets. The shaping, which, on account of the complex geometries of the foams, must be performed by milling or thermoforming, was left to the customers.

"The fabrication of ready-to-use sandwich cores that can directly be processed further was a logical extension of our service portfolio," said Uwe Lang, product manager for ROHACELL^® SHAPES, at the official opening of the Darmstadt plant. "From a producer of semifinished products, we have grown into a supplier of customized system solutions. This is what we mean by forward integration. The result is expansion of production capacity with optimized plants."

ROHACELL^® is a polymethacrylimide rigid foam used as a core material for sandwich constructions. The core is glued between two covering layers of high-strength plastic reinforced by carbon or glass fibers. This results in extremely light and rigid shaped parts of high load-bearing capacity. The foam is distinguished by outstanding mechanical and thermal properties: it possesses, for example, the best ratio of weight to mechanical strength in any foam, and also the highest heat deflection temperature.

The Successful Six: The six members of the ROHACELL® SHAPES team with Bernd Pfeiffer, head of the Plexiglas BU (4th from left), and Dr. Michael Meier-Kaiser (5th from left).

This is why ROHACELL^® is used as a structural foam in fiber composite components in aviation. In this branch of industry high demands are placed on the material. Optimal mechanical properties must be combined with the lowest possible weight. Extremely high temperature resistance and creep compression resistance are necessary for the production of shaped parts. Applications range from pressure bulkhead reinforcement in the fuselage, slotted flaps, and reinforcement ribs in the engine cowling to the folding tables in the passenger cabin. "ROHACELL^® SHAPES is a typical example of how the Solutions to Customers concept can be implemented in practice," says Bernd Pfeiffer, head of the Plexiglas Business Unit.

The idea of in-house production of ROHACELL^® SHAPES was conceived in December 2002. "Setting up capacities and workflows involved a lot of hard work. The successful collaboration with ROHACELL^® Technical Service and the service departments played an important role here," recalls product manager Lang. "Thanks to a highly motivated team we were able to overcome the initial hurdles." And this is reflected in the sales figures as well: "Sales have exceeded our expectations by a wide margin." Ninety-four percent of sales of ROHACELL^® SHAPES in 2003 were for aircraft construction. The important thing, according to Lang, is to maintain a harmonious balance between production, quality assurance, and logistics - which the six-strong ROHACELL^® SHAPES team succeeded in doing.

Further information on ROHACELL^® is available at www.rohacell.com.