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JOIN US AT JEC WORLD 2024!
Last year we had an absolute BLAST being a part of the JEC World! This year, as you can imagine, couldn’t be different... We are thrilled to announce that we will be attending the leading international composites show once again! Held in Paris, and organized by JEC...
COMIC MISIONES / MIG-20221004
Las industrias de la automoción y la aeronáutica son dos de las más relevantes dentro del sector manufacturero en España, llegando a aportar entre ambas el 11% del PIB del país.La competitividad de estos 2 sectores y, en general, del sector manufacturero español...
📢 JEC WORLD 2024 SPECIAL: STARTUP BOOSTER AWARD! 📢
Launched in 2017, Startup Booster has been organized in three different regions (Europe, USA, and Asia) and has already fostered the emergence of 900+ innovative projects from 60+ countries, 100 finalists, and 28 winners, including FibreCoat, Arevo, Continuous...
Horacio Pagani’s relationship with composite materials
“Carbon fiber is a way to express the shape of our design so that we can create beautiful and rich lines for each product.'' Horacio Pagani. Horacio understood the high potential of composite-material-based systems and, in particular, carbon fiber while making the...
The usage of composite materials in large transport aircraft is growing exponentially!
In today’s aerospace industry, the consumption of composite materials has increased to more than 50%. Composite materials have been used in the aerospace industry in primary and secondary structural parts, including rocket motor casings, radomes, antenna dishes,...
Corvette’s use of composite materials
Corvette’s use of advanced materials began in 1953 when the first Corvettes were produced with all-fiberglass bodies. In fact, Chevrolet’s Corvette original 1953 Corvette was the first ''mass-produced'' automobile to use fiberglass-reinforced plastic parts. Every...
Resin Infusion Manufacturing Technology
Resin infusion is a sophisticated technique for manufacturing high-performance, void-free composites even on large or complicated molds. In this manufacturing process, reinforcement is laid into the mold ‘‘dry’’, i.e. without any resin, and then enclosed in a...
How did the composites help during the race to space?
''July 20, 2019, marked the 50-year anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing. Though at the time the Apollo capsule was built, the composites industry was still in its infancy and the materials were not yet in widespread use, the Apollo capsule used early...
Have you ever heard of GLARE?
GLARE (an acronym for "GLAss-REinforced" Fiber Metal Laminate) is an FML made from interlayered thin sheets of aluminum and unidirectional S2-glass prepreg. This material was developed during the 1970s and 1980s through a partnership between Fokker, Delft University...
Boeing’s relationship with composite materials
Boeing’s first use of fiberglass was in the 707, amounting to only 2 percent of the structure! Under contract with NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Boeing experimented with advanced composites by using carbon fiber for the spoilers on two dozen...
Highly Deformable Carbon Fiber Shells!
Last year, a group of researchers at ETH Zürich (Arthur Schlothauer, Georgios A. Pappas, and Paolo Ermanni) published one of the most interesting articles we have seen in a while! They have studied the ''Material Response and Failure of Highly Deformable Carbon Fiber...
Bugatti EB 110
The Bugatti EB 110 is a mid-engine sports car produced by Bugatti Automobili from 1991 to 1995 when the company was liquidated for the second time. It was unveiled as the first ''Reborn Bugatti'' on September 15, 1991, on what would have been Ettore Bugatti's 110th...
Graphene-reinforced carbon fibers may offer a path to stronger, cheaper composites!
''Last year, the Graphene Council has published research that aimed to evaluate the use of pristine graphene as an additive to polyacrylonitrile (PAN) solution for carbon fiber precursor fibers based on previous research using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene...
What was the first application of carbon fibers?
Carbon fibers are older than you imagine! The first carbon fibers date back to 1860! In 1879, a certain guy named Thomas Edison chose carbon fibers to manufacture light bulb filaments. At that time, they were not petroleum-based. Instead, they were produced through...
How can we compare the properties of standard composites with carbon nanotubes and graphene composites?
A couple of weeks ago, we posted an Ashby's Plot that compared the properties of composites with many different materials. But how do they fare against carbon nanotubes and graphene? And what about graphene-based composites? Many works have reported the effect on the...
September’s Top Composite News!
Let’s kick off our newsfeed with very exciting news: The NCC successfully demonstrates AFP manufacture of CMC parts! Engineers at the National Composites Centre (NCC, Bristol, U.K.) have completed what they say is a European first by manufacturing...
What are epoxies resins?
Let's start learning about carbon fibers' best friend! Epoxy is the cured end product of epoxy resins, as well as a colloquial name for the epoxide functional group. Epoxy resins, also known as polyepoxides are a class of reactive prepolymers and polymers that contain...
What are the major failure modes of sandwich structures?
What are the major failure modes of sandwich structures? What are the causes of each failure mode? 1) Facing Failure - Caused due to insufficient panel thickness, facing thickness, or facing strength; 2) Transverse Shear Failure - Caused when either the shear strength...
Dyneema
Let's talk about the ''World's Strongest Fiber'', Dyneema! In 1968, chemist Dr. Albert Pennings managed to pull some wispy threads from the stirring rods in his beaker. He found it impossible to pull the strands apart. Excited, he rushed to tell his boss’s, which...
How can we compare the properties of composites with other materials?
A very useful method of doing this is by plotting them as ''Ashby charts'', which represent each material on the chart as ellipses or ''bubbles'', whose width and height are determined by the range of the value of the properties. As you may already know, for composite...
The first production carbon fiber bicycle
Today we will tell the story of the first production carbon fiber bicycle and how it has revolutionized the Tour de France! As with any sport, the competition to be the best leads to innovation everywhere possible, and as all composite lovers already know, carbon...
The Native Lab Launches A New Course On Monocoque Structural Analysis
Structural Analysis, applicable to real-life cases involving composites and related to the automotive sector, often isn't something that can be learned at university. Often it is learned on the job with all the difficulties it entails. So after wide request, The...
Failure sequences of carbon fiber specimens!
Let's talk about the failure sequence of carbon fiber specimens! The article ''Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer and Epoxy Adhesive Tensile Test Failure Analysis Using Scanning Electron Microscopy'' has many interesting pictures! Morphological characteristics analysis...
August’s Top Composite News!
Let’s kick off our newsfeed with very exciting news: Siemens Gamesa has installed the first Recyclable Blades at RWE offshore farm! Siemens Gamesa celebrated the delivery of green energy from the world’s first turbine equipped with the company’s composite...
What is the story behind the first fiberglass boat?
Several pioneers in fiberglass boatbuilding were notable builders in wood before World War II. That was the case with Ray Greene of Toledo, Ohio. Born in 1913, he began building boats at age 12! He was keen to discover a new and better material for making hulls, even...
F1 Helmets
It's safe to say that the leather caps and googles use during the '50s are long gone! During the end of the '60s, the first helmets made of a composite material (in this case, fiberglass) were already being developed. But what are F1 helmets made of today?...
How composite materials helped to enable the Mongol’s military dominance during the 13th century?
The use of composite materials in military equipment started much earlier than you think! In about 1200 AD, Mongols invented the first composite bows made from a combination of wood, bamboo, bone, cattle tendons, horns, and silk bonded with natural pine...
How are Carbon Fibers Manufactured
Carbon fiber is made from organic polymers, which consist of long strings of molecules held together by carbon atoms. Most carbon fibers (about 90%) are made from the polyacrylonitrile (PAN) process. A small amount (about 10%) are manufactured from rayon or the...
How Kevlar Bulletproof Vests became a reality?
In the early 1970s, DuPont’s Kevlar ballistic fabric was invented. During the mid-1970s, Kevlar was incorporated into a National Institute of Justice evaluation program to provide lightweight body armors for law enforcement officers. Kevlar armor was found...
Braiding
In braiding, a mandrel is fed through the center of the machine at a uniform rate and fiber yarns from moving carriers on the machine braid over the mandrel at a controlled rate. The carriers work in pairs to accomplish an over/under braiding sequence. Two or more...
July’s Top Composite News!
Let’s kick off our newsfeed with very exciting news: Ducati introduces lightweight motorcycle seat support rear frame! Mitsubishi Chemical Europe. Has displayed a lightweight motorcycle seat support rear frame developed through joint R&D between MCC subsidiary,...
How does the properties of composites materials fair against each other when it comes to their strain-stress curve?
Many different properties of composite materials can be acquired through a stress-strain graph, such as Maximum Tensile Strength, Yield Strength, Young's Modulus, Resilience, Toughness, etc. As you can see, each different reinforcement shown in this graph...
What was the first car to use fiberglass reinforced plastics?
It was 71 years ago, in 1949, that the world’s first automotive body made out of a revolutionary new ''wonder material'', glass-reinforced plastic (also known as GRP, fiberglass, or glass fiber) was conceived and made. The GRP car in question was the...
How thin are carbon fibers?
The answer is simple, carbon fibers have a diameter between 5 and 10 micrometers. But that is kind of hard to visualize, right? So, let's compare them to something all humans have (some more than others), hair! Luckily, we have a very nice picture that...
Which was the first high-performance fiber used by the composite industry?
The answer is Boron fiber! Boron fibers were first discovered in 1959 and were developed during the 1960s into the first true high-performance fibers. Until that time, glass fiber was the only other high-strength fiber available in continuous lengths, and the low...
Composite Materials Course
WHY THIS COURSE? Composite Materials are less of a choice and more an imperative. Metals and plastics might be the right solution for many engineering challenges. However, composites increasingly allow for a new range of possibilities and solutions! In this course,...
Why does carbon fibers possess such a high modulus in the direction of the fiber?
As many questions related to materials engineering, to answer that we have to understand the unit cell structure of the material, in this case, graphite.The crystal structure of graphite consists of sp2 hybridized carbon atoms arranged two-dimensionally in a honeycomb...
Which was the first composite material manufactured by humans?
As you may already know, a composite material is, by definition, ''a material that is made of two or more different materials, differentiable at a microscopic level, which specific properties are better than their separated properties''. Just like any...
June’s Top Composite News!
Wind Energy Industry: Let’s kick off our newsfeed with very exciting news: a project that aims to pioneer the use of natural fiber composites in the wind energy industry! The project Green Nacelle is commissioned by DOT (Delft Offshore Turbine), a leading wind turbine...
Managing Composites closes 1,5M€ funding round by Bouwen, to accelerate growth
Managing Composites, the engineering company specialized in composite materials projects, today announced the close of a 1,5M€ financing round by Bouwen Sistemas Industriales, holding of Itera Mobility Engineering, Hidragrup and Sinfiny.