Carbon Fiber Knowledge
The latest from the world of advanced composites and carbon fiber technology.
Carbon fiber prices are rebalancing along two diverging tracks in 2026. At the premium end, Toray announced in 2025 that it would raise prices on carbon fiber and intermediate products by 10-20% from January 2026, citing rising raw material, energy, and logistics costs. At the commodity
The global carbon fiber industry crossed a structural milestone in 2025. The ATA 2025 annual carbon fiber market report records worldwide operating capacity of 326,080 tonnes, and for the first time in the industry's history China accounts for more than half of it: 171,080 tonnes, or 52
Assembling a modern aircraft wing or fuselage means drilling hundreds of thousands of holes through stacked CFRP and titanium layers, typically Ti-6Al-4V against a carbon fiber laminate. The operation sounds simple, but it confronts the machinist with a contradiction: titanium is tough
Every mechanical joint in a carbon fiber structure represents a compromise. A pure adhesive bond is load-efficient and fatigue-tolerant but vulnerable to peel stress and long-term environmental degradation. A pure bolted joint resists peel and is inspectable and repairable, but concentr
Every cured carbon fiber part carries the geometric signature of the tool it was cured on. During an autoclave cure at 180°C, the tool and the part expand at different rates: a metal tool grows with temperature, while a CFRP part grows only slightly in-plane because its reinforcement ho
Filament-wound composite chemical tanks are the standard answer to a corrosive problem that steel never fully solves. From hydrochloric acid storage for metal finishing lines to caustic soda tanks in water treatment plants, process industries store aggressive chemicals in vessels that m
Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft are the most composite-intensive aviation category ever designed. Where conventional airliners use carbon fiber for roughly 50 percent of primary structure by weight, eVTOL airframes routinely exceed 80 percent, because the aircraft
Carbon fiber fishing rod action design determines how a rod bends, recovers, and transmits feel to the angler — and it is a genuine engineering discipline rather than a matter of luck. The action of a rod, described loosely as fast, moderate, or slow, is the product of three controllabl
Compression molding of carbon fiber parts is the dominant process for producing structural brackets at production volumes. Automotive seat brackets, battery tray mounts, suspension spring seats, aerospace interior brackets, and robotic arm mounting plates all follow the same logic: a pr