Filament wound blade and method for manufacturing same

Abstract

There is disclosed a method of manufacturing a filament wound blade including the steps of forming a spar by winding a plurality of resin impregnated filaments in side-by-side relationship between a pair of spaced apart spools. The spools are held in their spaced apart orientation to maintain the filaments in their unidirectional orientation and a flexible bondable bag fitted over the spar filaments and inflated to assume a generally cylindrical configuration. Resin impregnated shell filaments are wound in a helical pattern about such bag to form a shell and the bag then deflated and placed in a female mold defining the desired contour of such blade, and such bag then re-inflated to thereby cause the shell to assume such desired contour. The mold is then heated to a first temperature to gel the resin impregnated filaments, to a second temperature to cure the spar and shell filaments, and finally to a third higher temperature to melt the bag and bond the spar and shell filaments together to thereby form an integral filament wound blade having unidirectional spar filaments for carrying centrifugal forces and encapsulated in a helical would shell for carrying torsional loads.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.