Carbon Fiber Knowledge
The latest from the world of advanced composites and carbon fiber technology.
No wind turbine blade reaches the field on the strength of analysis alone. Even the most detailed finite element model must be confronted with reality at full scale: a blade the size of a civil aircraft wing, loaded until it bends, cracks, and in one sacrificial test, breaks. Full-scale
For decades, the highest-quality carbon fiber structures were made the slow way: prepreg laid up by hand or machine into molds, vacuum bagged, and cured for hours in an autoclave. Autoclave curing delivers excellent properties, but it is expensive, energy-intensive, and fundamentally sl
Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) structures rarely end their lives as single cured components. Frames meet skins, spars meet ribs, and subassemblies must be attached in the field or removed for maintenance. For these demountable connections, bolted joints remain the dominant solut
When the first 100-meter wind turbine blade was certified less than a decade ago, it was a milestone that seemed difficult to repeat. By 2026, 100-meter-plus blades are the mainstream of offshore wind development. The clearest signal came in May 2026, when a 107-meter blade — reported a
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