Marine applications: The power from a ship’s engine can be transmitted to the propeller by a shaft and Centra Antriebe Kishey in Germany and Geislinger in Austria supply filament wound cfrp shafts, which, because they are lighter, can be made longer than conventional steel shafts.
The design of the humble laser dinghy is carefully controlled by stringent class rules, leaving little scope for the use of cfrp except for the construction of the tiller and tiller extension, where the slim profile offered by cfrp is an obvious choice.
Yachts: It is now common practice for all top boats built for the America’s Cup to be fabricated from cfrp with a honeycomb core using dry prepreg methods. Goss Challenges have built a racing catamaran using carbon fiber reputed to be the largest carbon composite structure ever built in Europe. The designer Adrian Thompson of Paragon Mann relied heavily on finite element analysis using SRDC I-DEAS. Initial trials with the vessel revealed a jointing problem, which was resoled, but subsequent problems necessitated abandoning the vessel, perhaps emphasizing the need to undertake this aspect of construction in a very controlled manner.
Ellen Macarthur, who became the fastest women circumnavigator in Kingfisher, an 18 m raceboat, utilized carbon fiber/Nomex for hull and deck, Kevlar shinned cfrp frame for the blister cabin, mast and deck spreaders molded in HM cfrp and a cfrp boom, emphasizing the advantages of mixed construction.
The 38m long catamaran Playstation set a new world record from Miami to New york, with hulls and beams constructed from cfrp/Al honeycomb and a carbon fiber mast, which was some 45m above the water.
Reputedly the tallest mast (53.33m) in sailing history was fabricated in two halves by the Consolidated Yacht company for the Zeus super yacht, using carbon/epoxy prepreg, vacuum bagged and cured in a special oven tailormade from foil insulated polyurethane foam board and an Al plenum curing up to 82C. The two halves were initially fastened mechanically along their length and then bonded together curing at 82C.
Ordinarily, tall masts are made in several sections due to limitations of the curing oven, but a mast 59m long was fabricated from carbon fiber prepreg in one piece for the yacht Hyperion by Royao Huisman, utilizing the composites workshop as a giant oven and curing at 80C.
The latest claim is for the 75m super yacht, Mirabella V, built by VT shipbuilding and reputed to the largest composite vessel and largest single masted sailing yacht yet built. The 90m composite mast was built by VT Halmatic by jointing five sections of >25mm thick tube made from UD carbon/epoxy prepreg and bonded together with an epoxy adhesive. The upper deck used carbon/vinyl ester skins over a foam core and the bulwarks and superstructure were all reinforced with UD carbon fiber to carry the stress around the various deck opening.
The D-shaped fenders of Swedish and Danish lifeboat rescue institutions have been made from shaped foam reinforced with layers of carbon fiber and coated with a polyurethane elastomer, providing buoyancy and stability and also deflecting the waves, thereby enhancing visibility.
Hall Spars use heat cured prepreg products and claim that autoclave curing is superior to vacuum bad curing for the manufacture of carbon fiber spars, enabling pressures of up to seven times the effective pressure of vacuum bagging to be used. Since a carbon rig is lighter than an Al mast extrusion, its pitching moment is reduced and it also pumps less in a seaway.