JEC Composites has announced the new winners of the JEC Asia Innovation Awards Programme 2009. This year, nine companies and their 15 partners will receive awards at the JEC Asia Composites Show, Oct. 14 to 16, 2009, in Singapore.
Each year, a jury of renowned international experts chooses the best composite innovations, based on their technical interest, market potential, partnership, financial impact and originality.
The winners were selected from the following categories: environment and recycling, raw materials, process, automation, aerospace, building and construction, sports and leisure and transportation.
In the building and construction category, the winner is Kurimoto Plastics Co., Ltd., of Japan, partnered with Japan’s National Insitute for Rural Engineering, for FRPM pipes for sewage systems.
The FRP layer consists of high-strength glass fibers wound in the circumferential and axial directions by the filament winding process and hardened by thermosetting unsaturated polyester resin. The included resin mortar is a polyester concrete made from selected fine sand hardened by unsaturated polyester resin, having a compressive strength several times as high as an ordinary cement concrete. The interior and exterior FRP layers bear the bending stress of pipes, while the middle resin mortar layer keeps each FRP layer at a certain interval and transmits shearing force. Dynamically, this structure is ideal, excelling in strength against external pressures such as soil and truck load and against various internal pressures as well.
FRPM pipes are substituted for steel pipes and concrete pipes to reduce costs and to prolong the system’s service life.
Source: JEC Composites