CFRP chopper discs: state of the art and long term perspective

The Institute of Lightweight Structures (LLB) of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Technische Universität München has been designing and producing carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) chopper disks for over a decade, specialising in designs of lightweight disks with a high rotational speed. State of the art CFRP chopper discs reach a maximal operational speed of 20,000 rpm for different windows number and dimensions and discs diameters up to 750 mm. In the long term research cooperation between LLB and FRM-II, solid CFRP chopper discs with an ultimate speed of about 27,500 rpm have been manufactured and tested and improvements aiming at a higher ultimate speed are envisioned. An increase of operational speed is not the only wish of the scientists designing modern spectrometers. With the creation of the ESS, new systems are envisioned that utilise very large chopper discs at a low operational speed. In this specific case, lightweight and stable chopper discs could be made with the use of twin skins with a stabilising medium between them: a so-called sandwich structure. The paper presents the work carried out in the framework of future chopper disc with the aim of exploiting the intrinsic characteristics of CFRP for the development of future systems.      «

The Institute of Lightweight Structures (LLB) of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Technische Universität München has been designing and producing carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) chopper disks for over a decade, specialising in designs of lightweight disks with a high rotational speed. State of the art CFRP chopper discs reach a maximal operational speed of 20,000 rpm for different windows number and dimensions and discs diameters up to 750 mm. In the long term research cooperation...     »