The filtering area of the rock dehydration equipment is up to 220 m2 and its weight is 60 tones. In order to decrease the installation and maintenance labor costs of this equipment, the designers started looking for new structural changes aimed at its weight characteristics improvement. The “sandwich” (triplex structure) filtering element turned out to be a solution, where the high-strength honeycomb core produced by ORPE Technologiya was applied as a separator between the ceramic sectors. Due to the composite material usage it was possible to reduce the weight of the element having a useful area of 0.85 m2 by 36% from 44 to 28 kg. Depending on the useful area of the filtering element, the weight of the dry filter can be reduced from 70 to 9000 kg.
With the benefit of high mechanical strength, low water absorption, acid and alkali solutions resistance, the glass-fiber reinforced honeycombs were useful for other technical solutions. For example, the equipment performance increased by 30%. Besides, the separators made of this material are able to hold the damaged ceramic element’s fragments and to prevent them from overstraining the adjoining sectors. This increases the lifetime of the equipment.
“Metallurgy is the high-technology industry just like the airspace. Here the weight, strength and other properties are no less important. That is why the application of the materials, which have already proved their quality and reliability in the space and in the sky, for the metallurgy can not only increase the equipment performance but also improve the production processes,” said Andrei Silkin, Director General of ORPE Technologiya.
The high-strength glass fiber honeycomb core developed by ORPE Technologiya is the structural material based on the glass fiber and polymer resin. It shows the enhanced tensile strength properties and high sound absorption and thermal insulation characteristics. It is produced for high- and medium-load carrying sandwich structures of the aircrafts and aerial array radomes for radio detecting and ranging equipment of various profiles. The product range provides the materials with working temperatures up to 3000°C and compression strength from 1.5 to 5.7 MPa.
