Carbon Fiber is a polymer and is sometimes known as graphite fiber. It is a very strong material that is also very lightweight. Carbon fiber is five-times stronger than steel and twice as stiff. Though carbon fiber is stronger and stiffer than steel, it is lighter than steel; making it the ideal manufacturing material for many parts.
Carbon fiber history:
Carbon fiber dates back to 1879 when Thomas Edison baked cotton threads or bamboo silvers at high temperatures, which carbonized them into an all-carbon fiber filament. By 1958, high-performance carbon fibers were invented just outside of Cleveland, OH. Although they were inefficient, these fibers contained around 20% carbon and had low strength and stiffness properties.
In 1963 a new manufacturing process was developed at a British research center, which is where carbon fiber’s strength potential was realized.
Carbon fiber is a material consisting of thin, strong crystalline filaments of carbon, essentially carbon atoms bonded together in long chains. The fibers are extremely stiff, strong, and light, and are used in many processes to create excellent structural materials. Carbon fiber offers a variety of benefits including:
- High stiffness and stiffness-to-weight ratio
- High tensile strength and strength-to-weight ratio
- High-temperature tolerance with special resins
- Low thermal expansion
- High chemical resistance
What Can Be Made With Carbon Fiber?
Almost anything. If you would like a carbon fiber pint glass, that can be made. ICE has made many different shapes with carbon fiber and other composites, including:
- Bike frames
- Aircraft Wings
- Automotive drive shafts
- Tubing
- Containers
- Propeller blades
- Car components
Most carbon fibers are produced using polyacrylonitrile (PAN), pitch, or rayon as the precursor. The selected precursor material is first spun to create long fibers. The raw fibers are then heated in an oxygen-free environment in a process called stabilization to prevent them from burning or shrinking. After stabilization, the fibers are carbonized at a very high temperature of around 1000 – 3000 degrees Celsius in an inert atmosphere such as nitrogen. This drives out almost all non-carbon elements from the fibers leaving behind almost pure carbon atoms in a crystalline structure. Finally, the fibers receive a surface treatment to enhance their adhesion to matrix materials and then wound onto spools.
The properties of a carbon fiber part are close to that of steel and the weight is close to that of plastic. Thus, the strength-to-weight ratio (as well as stiffness-to-weight ratio) of a carbon fiber part is much higher than either steel or plastic.
