Non-Structured Carbon Composites

Non-Structured Carbon Composites

Emission from the World rapidly-growing fleet of vehicles are an environmental concern and raising the operating efficiency of a transport is a promising way to reduce its overall impact. New techniques to nano structured carbon fibers for novel composites are showing the potential in vehicle manufacture to reduce the weight of cars by 10% or more. lighter car needs less fuel to operate increasing the efficiency of moving people and goods and reduces the green house gas emission.

However the efficiency is the only one concern,another of equal importance is passenger safety. To increase the strength and toughness of new composites, the interface between the carbon fibers and the surrounding polymer matrix is engineered at the nano-scale to improve anchoring, using carbon nano-tubes, for example. In the event of an accident, these surfaces are designed to absorb impact without tearing, distributing the force and the passengers inside the vehicle

A third challenge which may now be close to the solution is that the recycling carbon fiber composites,something which has held back the widespread deployment of the technology. New technique involve engineering cleavable "release points" into the material at the interface between the polymer and the fiber so that the bonds can be broken in a controlled fashion and the components that make up the composite can be recovered separately and reused. Taken together these three elements could have a major effect in bringing forward the potential for manufacturing lightweight, superfast and recyclable composite vehicle to a mess scale.