Carbon Fiber Knowledge
The latest from the world of advanced composites and carbon fiber technology.
The humanoid robot is no longer a laboratory curiosity. In 2025 and 2026, the world's leading robotics companies — from Figure, Tesla, and Boston Dynamics in the West to Unitree, UBTech, and Fourier in China — moved from single-digit prototype runs to pilot production lines of tens and
The European Union's Net Zero Industry Act, which entered into force in mid-2024, is the regulatory backbone of the bloc's clean technology manufacturing strategy. Among its most consequential elements for the composites industry, the NZIA identifies wind energy as a strategic net-zero
China's commercial aircraft program passed a quiet but decisive milestone in 2025: the COMAC C919, the narrowbody that opened the domestic airliner era, moved into higher-rate production while attention shifted to the larger C929 widebody still on the drawing board. The C929 matters far
In 2025, China's carbon fiber localization rate crossed 80% — a milestone that would have seemed improbable a decade earlier, when domestic production covered only a small fraction of the country's consumption. The progress is real and visible in the supply chain: standard-modulus tow m
No material price moves tell a clearer story about supply and demand than carbon fiber's. In 2022, industrial T300-12K tow sold for about $33 per kilogram. By the end of 2024, the same fiber was trading near $12 per kilogram — a 60%+ collapse driven by the surge of new production capaci
Every blade on a commercial wind turbine is held to the hub by a ring of steel bolts passing through the blade root laminate. That ring is not a simple fastening detail; it is the highest-loaded and most fatigue-critical joint in the entire turbine structure. Each flapwise bending cycle
Liquid hydrogen stores three times more energy per unit volume than compressed hydrogen, which is why every serious program for hydrogen-powered aircraft is converging on cryogenic LH2 storage. But the tank that holds it must operate at −253°C — the boiling point of liquid hydrogen — wh
Composite structures hide their damage. A barely visible impact on a carbon fiber skin can delaminate internal plies without leaving a mark, and the repair decision then depends on scheduled inspections rather than on what the structure actually knows about itself. Embedded fiber optic
In autoclave composite manufacturing, the tool is the part. The mold surface defines the geometry of every carbon fiber laminate cured against it, and the way that mold expands and contracts through the cure cycle is written into the final dimensions of every part that touches it. A too