Carbon Fiber Knowledge
The latest from the world of advanced composites and carbon fiber technology.
Thermoplastic composites have gained ground in aerospace, automotive, and industrial applications because they offer a fundamentally different processing route than conventional thermosets: instead of a long chemical cure in an autoclave, a thermoplastic part is melted under heat and pr
Endurance is the defining constraint of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — for surveillance, agriculture, delivery, and long-range inspection missions, every additional minute of flight time translates directly into mission capability. Lithium battery energy density has improved only inc
Quadruped robots have moved from research labs into working roles: pipeline inspection in refineries, warehouse patrolling, construction site surveying, and payload delivery over rough terrain. What all these roles have in common is a demand for legs that are light enough to be swung qu
Every quarter, CompositesWorld's composites demand surveys track order momentum, capacity utilization, and inventory positions across the industry's main market segments. The July 2026 reading is the most instructive of the mid-cycle period: it captures a market that has cooled from its
The European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act, in force since 2024, was written with metals and battery materials in mind — lithium, cobalt, rare earths. But its logic reaches far beyond mining, and carbon fiber has become one of the clearest industrial illustrations of how the regula
For most of the past decade, carbon fiber moved along a handful of predictable routes. Japanese producers supplied high-modulus tow to aerospace; Chinese and Taiwanese mills filled the industrial and sporting-good segments; and a thin stream of precursor traveled from low-cost producers
European composite producers face a regulatory shift that has been years in the making but is arriving quickly. Regulation (EU) 2026/718 sets escalating recycling and recovery requirements for end-of-life composite products, and with it comes a blunt administrative fact: waste cannot be
In mid-2026 Pilatus Aircraft commissioned a new composite production center at its Stans headquarters in Switzerland — a CHF 100 million facility, roughly USD 123 million, named Schwarzhorn after the peak of the Bernese Oberland that overlooks the factory floor. The investment is one of
The United States Army has spent the past two years turning a phrase into a procurement doctrine. "Drone dominance" — the idea that the Army should field large numbers of low-cost uncrewed aircraft rather than a small number of expensive ones — has moved from congressional task-force re