Carbon Fiber Knowledge
The latest from the world of advanced composites and carbon fiber technology.
Hydrogen trains are the most credible route to decarbonizing rail lines that cannot be electrified with overhead wires — tens of thousands of kilometers of track across Europe alone. The systems powering these trains are now well established: a fuel cell converts hydrogen and oxygen int
The Nordic region is building the world's first generation of high-speed electric ferries, and every one of them wrestles with the same problem: battery weight. A battery pack stores energy at roughly a fortieth of the energy density of diesel fuel, so an electric ferry that must run a
Sweden does not have a large carbon fiber demand in the traditional sense — its aerospace and motorsport consumption is modest compared with France, Italy, or the United Kingdom. What it does have is a structural transformation that is quietly creating new, high-potential demand channel
Finland is rarely the first country that comes to mind in a carbon fiber market discussion — Germany, France, and the United Kingdom dominate European consumption — but no discussion of composite processing is complete without it. The country combines one of the world's strongest pultru
Belgium rarely appears on the global list of carbon fiber producing nations, yet it holds an outsized position in the European composites value chain. The country is home to Syensqo, the specialty chemicals company that emerged from the Solvay split and that inherited one of the world's
Carbon fiber is expensive to make, and that expense is exactly why recycling it matters. A tonne of virgin aerospace-grade tow costs tens of thousands of dollars, yet until recently almost all post-industrial scrap — offcut prepreg, manufacturing trim, and expired-out-of-life material —
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