Our Technology

Our years of experience and expertise have led us to develop advance composites technology which excels at all levels of performance and durability. We use high quality raw materials in order to deliver high performance products.

Raw Material

Fiber reinforced Plastic (FRP) is a generic term used to describe all composite that use plastic as their matrix (resin) and have fibers reinforcing the matrix. The fibers can be of glass or of carbon; the matrix (resin) is generally Polyester, Vinyl Ester or Epoxy. The purpose of the matrix is to distribute the load over the reinforcements evenly. This micro-mechanics give composites their high specific strength.

Resin

The final properties vary greatly when different resin is used. In the local market almost all supplier & manufacturers use Polyester as the resin system. Polyester is the cheapest of the resin systems but also has the lowest properties.

Reinforcements

Reinforcements can be glass fiber (Fiber Glass) or Carbon fiber; Fiber glass being the most commonly used. Reinforcements are the load carrying component in the composite. The orientation of the fibers is critical. The composite have the maximum strength in the direction of fiber orientation.

Commonly used polyester based FRP products used "Chopped" fiber glass. Which is strands of fiber glass randomly distributed in the matrix (resin). This system does not incorporate the forces and loads and as a result only a fraction of the total fibers are actually aligned with the load direction, meaning the load bearing capabilities are very limited. However this is a very easy & economical method to manufacture FRP.

Innovative Composite Pools uses continues fibers, which have much superior load bearing properties. We engineer each product to know the exact loads and forces acting on the part and thus engineer the fiber orientation accordingly. This needs a complete stress analysis of the part and a much advanced manufacturing technique.

Structural Mechanics

Innovative Composite Pools uses advance stress analysis & modeling in order to engineer a composite part. As per the Laminate Theory the stiffness of composite is related to the thickness of the structure. The relationship is exponential; meaning an increase of thickness of the composite from 1 unit to 2 units will mean an increase in the stiffness by 8 times. We thus use sandwiched structures to increase the thickness without having to sacrifice on weight.

Water Adsorption

An important property of any resin is its ability to withstand degradation from water ingress. This is significant in how the absorbed water affects the resin and resin/fibre bond in a composite, leading to a gradual and long term loss in mechanical properties. Polyester resin is prone to water degradation and a thin polyester laminate can be expected to retain only 65% of its inter-laminar shear strength after immersion in water for a period of one year, whereas an epoxy laminate immersed for the same periodwill retain around 90%.

Process

The common local market practice is using Spray Lay-up process which sprays fragments of fiber glass onto the mould and eventually builds up a laminate thickness.

Innovative Composite Pools uses a more advanced Vacuum Bagging technique. This, as illustrated below, using vacuum to not only remove air bubbles & porosity but also consolidates the layers in the structure. This process gives higher mechanical properties

Finishing

Innovative Composite Pools offers a wide variety of finishing on its product. We have expertise in using ceramic or glass mosaic tiles as a finishing option. We also offer our clients a very large array of finishing options including the traditional gel coat and the more modern metallic tiles.