Positioning profiles for pultrusions in composite bus body
AssigneeTPI Corporation
InventorsAhsan Uddin, John Perraut
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method of forming a composite vehicle components (e.g. walls, floor, roof) having interleaved foam core members and pre-pultruded reinforcing pillars by pultruding the cores and pillars into a vehicle component (e.g. bus sidewall formed as integral component front to rear) and cutting apertures therein for insertion of vehicle accessories (e.g. windows). Also, vehicle components can be formed having interlocking profiled edges where a first component is inserted into a second component, and rotated to bring the two components into locking engagement. A plurality of components can be formed with the same geometry, and oriented 180 degrees offset from each other to bring their profiled edges adjacent to each other.
Claims20
A method of forming a composite vehicle component comprising:
- pultruding a plurality of reinforcement structures, each reinforcement structure having opposing inner and outer surfaces defining a thickness therebetween, each reinforcement structure having a first edge and an opposing second edge extending between the thickness;
- providing a plurality of core members, each core member having opposing inner and outer surfaces defining a thickness therebetween, each core member having a first edge and an opposing second edge extending between the thickness, wherein the plurality of core members includes foam;
- positioning each core member of the plurality of core members between adjacent reinforcement structures, interlocking a first edge of a reinforcement structure with a first edge of a core member;
- displacing the interlocked core members and reinforcement structures simultaneously;
- and
- pultruding the interlocked reinforcement structures and core members together to apply an inner skin layer onto the inner layers of the reinforcement structures and core members, and an outer skin layer onto the outer layers of the reinforcement structures and core members.
A method of forming a composite vehicle component comprising:
- pultruding a plurality of reinforcement structures, each reinforcement structure having opposing inner and outer surfaces defining a thickness therebetween;
- providing a plurality of core members, each core member having opposing inner and outer surfaces defining a thickness therebetween, wherein at least one of the plurality of core members includes a transparent window;
- positioning a core member with the transparent window between adjacent reinforcement structures;
- pultruding the reinforcement structures and core members together to apply an inner skin layer onto the inner layers of the reinforcement structures and core members and an outer skin layer onto the outer layers of the reinforcement structures and core members;
- and
- removing at least a portion of at least one of the pultruded inner skin layer or outer skin layer from the transparent window.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.