Airborne Composites completed successfully the engineering and manufacturing of the first two composite front panels for the Dutch ICM trains. The delivery of these pilot products is planned before the end of this month, as part of a prototype series of four ship sets. The new integrated sandwich panel concept is a replacement of the old two-door system. The former structure is obsolete, as the walk through possibility of these train heads has been cancelled. The airborne solution reduces weight, which is important for energy saving purposes. Furthermore the new panels save approximately 200.000 euro"s on maintenance costs/year. The Airborne engineering and manufacturing contract, awarded by NedTrain, started in the first quarter of this year.

The current two-door structure exists out of a glass - polyester front and back panel around an inner steel frame and is produced in the NedTrain composite work shop. Experience showed that over the years the connection between composite and steel sometimes was lost and because of this the metal structure corroded. The Airborne engineering activities started with the review of the specifications and concept design of the integrated sandwich solution. The most promising concept was analyzed on strength and stiffness and reviewed by NedTrain. The final design was further engineered  and manufactured by Airborne. At this moment (early August 2006) tooling is produced and accepted, as well as the first two glass-epoxy sandwich panels. Both the tooling and the products are produced with the vacuum infusion process. When the prototypes prove to be successful, all the 87 three-coach systems and  50 four-coach systems will be fitted with this new integrated design.