Kumair manufactures carbon fiber sandwich panels with a variety of foam cores. The picture above shows a group of parts made from a laminate with 1/2" LAST-A-FOAM^® core and carbon fiber skins comprising both 12K and 3K prepreg to create damage tolerant, high stiffness-to-weight components. The primary benefit of using foam core is to increase the panel rigidity without adding weight, since the high stiffness carbon fiber skins are spaced away from the neutral axis. In addition, foam is more damage tolerant than honeycomb and machines cleanly. Many foams, like the one shown, are also water resistant due to the closed cell construction.

Kumair has the ability to create standard prepreg and high temperature foam core sheets up to 24"x48". Foam cores are available in a variety of densities and thickness ranging from extremely lightweight 1.5 lbs/ft³ to heavy duty 20-30 lbs/ft³ foam, and 1/8" up to 1" thick. This gives the designer tremendous flexibility to optimize a design to meet the given space, stiffness, crush resistance, and temperature requirements.

One of the challenges of designing parts using carbon fiber foam core is integration (i.e. assembly) with other components. Kumair helps customers determine the best way to do this, including CAD design of metal, fiberglass, or carbon fiber inserts and complete system FEA.