New composite materials for railway applications

The high mechanical properties to density ratio of composite materials make them very attractive for transportation industries, where an important key factor is the energy consumption and the capability of increase capacity. In this regard, the use of light materials as composites could decrease the weight obtaining energy savings and make possible the increase of payload. The main problem to implement composite materials within the railway sector is that each component and assembly in the complete train needs to fulfil the Fire, Smoke and Toxicity (FST) requirements described in standard EN 45545. At present, there are few resins that comply with this regulation, due to the recent incorporation of this standard, which was approved in 2013. The resins, which comply with this standard, are highly doped increasing the viscosity. A high viscosity matrix is more difficult to process, making that the fabrication of the laminates becomes a challenge. A preliminary selection of materials developed for railway industry was done in this work. Furthermore, an extensive characterisation was made to find the best material as possible for the different railway applications. Using prepreg-based materials, a comparison between two different processes (autoclave and furnace) was carried out. The main aim is to get a preliminary evaluation and compare the different materials between each other.