I don’t know if somebody has noticed that more and more products have begun to use carbon fiber. This is due to the fact that carbon fiber has many excellent mechanical properties, such as lightweight, high strength but easy processing, high-temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and other excellent properties. Because of these excellent properties, carbon fiber is widely used in aerospace, automotive, outdoor products, marine products and other fields. Today let me mainly discuss why carbon fiber is used in the field of drones and where is it used in drones?
In the beginning, the main material of the drone was aluminum alloy, a small part is made of other metal materials such as titanium alloy and steel. Although the metal material has high strength, it is heavy, resulting in a small payload factor of the drone.In addition, metal cannot shield electromagnetic waves and easily interferes with radar signals, which is very unfavorable to military drones. The advanced carbon fiber composite material just makes up for these shortcomings. This is why drones are now generally made of carbon fiber.
Without any data comparison, some people may be skeptical. Let us compare the characteristics of carbon fiber and metal materials.
First of all, in terms of weight, we all know that aluminum alloy is the lightest metal, but the weight of carbon fiber is only 1/3 of that of aluminum alloy. The use of carbon fiber greatly reduces the weight of the UAV, the battery life is longer, and the payload factor of the UAV is increased.
In terms of fatigue resistance, the fatigue limit of most metals is 30% of their tensile strength, while the fatigue limit of carbon fiber composites can reach 70% of their tensile strength, reducing sudden accidents in the course of use, high safety, and long life.
With the continuous progress of UAV technology, it is widely used in many fields. It is mainly used in military, aircraft models, logistics, exploration, rescue, agricultural production, and many other fields. Agricultural plant protection drones are representative of the application of drones in production and life. The agricultural drone is a kind of unmanned remote-controlled agricultural spraying small aircraft for agricultural and forestry plant protection. Have the ability to spray pesticides, fertilize, sowing, pollinate, and so on. The use of carbon fiber material greatly reduces the weight, increases the payload coefficient of the UAV, can carry more pesticides, and greatly improves work efficiency.
Carbon fiber components are the best materials for UAV shells, frames, blades, and other structures at present.
In the early days, propeller materials had many other problems, such as poor strength, heavy, difficult processing, poor wear resistance, and so on. The propeller is the main thrust component of the UAV, which greatly increases the problems of sudden accidents and low battery life of UAVs.
On the other hand, carbon fiber composites have the advantages of being lightweight, high strength and good wear resistance. Use carbon fiber material to produce propeller can make it harder and lightweight. Replace the early materials, better control the balance and greatly reduce the probability of collision.
The core electronic components of the UAV are in the drone shell. so it is very important to have a good-performance drone shell. The forming process of the carbon fiber shell is simple, and the integrated molding of the shell can be realized. The UAV shell made of carbon fiber material is very light and strong, has excellent impact resistance, has a strong protective effect on acid, alkali, and salt, and can still maintain the stability of the whole structure under acid-base salt corrosion. In addition, carbon fiber composites have the advantages of reducing vibration and noise, reducing interference to long-range signals, and having electromagnetic shielding properties.
Some commercial drones, such as logistics, agriculture, and other fields, not only have high requirement for the strength of the arm but also needs a strong carrying capacity. One of the ways to enhance load-carrying capacity is to reduce its own weight.
At present, most drone arms adopt a tube-mounted structure. This is because this structure has stable performance. The strength of the arm can be changed by changing the layers of carbon fiber used in the production. Customers can decide the wall thickness of the pipe according to the weight they need to carry. Dronecarbon has rich experience in the production of carbon fiber sheets and tubes for up to 15 years and can produce carbon fiber tubes of different sizes, wall thicknesses, and lengths. Besides, we can produce tubes in different shapes by customizing molds. As long as you have a reasonable idea, we can realize it.