The following applies to the demanding manufacturing, maintenance and repair processes of FRP components: In accordance with the Product Safety Act (PSA), the “state of the art” must be applied in order to be able to use a material, a product made from it or a process safely. A product may only be brought to the market “if it does not endanger the safety and health of persons when used as intended or in a foreseeable manner”.

If this verification cannot be provided purely non-destructively and with one hundred per cent certainty on a process and product-specific basis, ISO 9001 defines this as a so-called “special process”. In order to fulfil the “state of the art”, errors must be avoided from the beginning of the product development phase through production, maintenance and repair to the end of the product.

Special case composites

Fibre composite technology thus represents another of many “special processes”, as are welding and adhesive bonding, for example. For these, the „state of the art“ is avoiding possible
process and product defects through a consistent quality management system (QMS), e.g. in accordance with ISO 9001. However, ISO 9001 only defines the QM framework conditions and requires technology-specific concretization.

Basic works

The new DIN SPEC 35255 does this for the fibre composite technology by specifying, comparable to the corresponding welding and adhesive bonding standards, an existing QMS and the ISO 9001 core idea of error prevention, thus helping user companies to work (still more) safely with fibre composite technology.

Application and benefits

DIN SPEC 35255 defines both the requirements for the quality-compliant development and design of fibre composite components and the general organisational, contractual and manufacturing principles for development, production, maintenance and repair across all cross-industry sectors. It contains the three core elements familiar from the welding and adhesive bonding standards:

• Classification according to safety classes 1–4,
• verification management of product and process safety, and
• objective verification of the respective technological personnel competence (competence level 1 – 3).

In this way, DIN SPEC 35255 holistically completes the required „state of the art“ for the professional, error (source) avoiding planning, organisation and implementation of fibre composite processes and products in all areas of industry and handicraft. The FRP-binding “state of the art” now consists of the inseparable linkage of PSG, QMS and DIN SPEC 35255. By implementing DIN SPEC 35255, the user designs FRP processes in a robust and reproducible manner.