Carbon Fiber Knowledge
The latest from the world of advanced composites and carbon fiber technology.
The economics of thermoplastic composite spars for wind turbine blades turns on a deceptively simple variable: the width of the unidirectional (UD) tape semi-finished product. Wider tape means fewer tape passes to build a spar cap, shorter layup cycles and lower handling cost, but it al
Deepwater oil and gas production pushes every riser system to the limit of what steel can deliver. In water depths beyond 1,500 meters, the weight of steel risers drives up floater payload, requires larger buoyancy modules, and imposes fatigue demands that accelerate with every meter of
European hydrogen truck and bus fleets are entering their scale-up phase. Industry analysts tracking heavy-duty hydrogen programs across the European Union expect more than 50,000 fuel-cell trucks and hydrogen buses to be in operation by 2027, up from a few thousand in 2025. The growth
Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft carry an unusually high share of carbon fiber in their airframes. Analysts estimate that composite materials account for 60-70 percent of the structural mass of typical four-to-seven-passenger designs, a density of carbon fiber usag
Canada has long played a supporting role in the North American carbon fiber story — the second-largest aerospace composites base on the continent, but always in the shadow of the United States. That positioning is changing. Three demand streams are converging to make Canada a market wor
Hydrogen fuel cell fleets in Europe are growing quickly: buses in Madrid, Cologne, and London, trucks on German autobahn corridors, and refuse collection vehicles in Dutch cities all store hydrogen onboard as compressed gas. For every one of those vehicles, a procurement team made the s
Automated fiber placement has become the backbone of large composite structure manufacturing, from business jet wings to rocket motor casings and wind turbine spar caps. A modern AFP gantry can lay carbon fiber tows at hundreds of meters per minute, placing narrow strips of prepreg with
In December 2022 the US Army selected Bell's V-280 Valor as its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, the program that will replace the aging UH-60 Black Hawk fleet with a tiltrotor designed to fly twice as far and twice as fast. Behind the airframe award sits a materials decision with it
The pressure cycle is the unit of truth for a hydrogen tank. A tank filled to 350 or 700 bar and emptied again experiences a fatigue load that no single burst test can represent: the liner deforms, the carbon fiber overwrap carries the alternating load, and small defects grow cycle by c