2.0 USE OF CARBON FIBRE IN AUTO INDUSTRY 3
Miscellaneous automotive applications 9
3.0 USE OF CARBON FIBRE IN MEDICAL INDUSTRY 10
Scientific and medical electrode applications 12
Lighter wing and body construction 14
Towards being smaller and lighter, in general 21
Carbon fibers were discovered in the late 1800s when Thomas Edison was testing materials to use as a filament in the first incandescent light bulb. In one of those experiments, he baked a cotton thread to produce a pure carbon fiber. This was the breakthrough he needed to make electric lighting both practical and affordable. A similarly-oriented process was developed nearly a century later to produce carbon fibers from synthetic fibers. Commercial production of these "graphite" carbon fibers in the 1960s provided the high-strength and lightweight materials needed for use in military aircraft and in the space program. It remains unfortunate that in recent decades, the high cost of these synthetic carbon fibers has limited their viability to aircraft components, sporting goods and specialty products for critical applications requiring strength, stiffness, lower weight and outstanding fatigue characteristics.
Carbon fibre (or ôgraphiteö fiber, or ôgraphiteö depending upon which manufacturer is attempting to merchandise the product) has been utilized as a reinforcement element in composite material technology for the last twenty-five (25) years (Abraham, 2001). The technology was introduced during the decade of the 1960s, and has improved significantly since then. These improvements may be attributed to the following factors (Abraham, 2001):
Improvements in both the quality and performance of the fibers.
An increase in the production capacity (worldwide) and processing technology.
The high level of support for the technology by the Western European and U.S. aerospace industries.
In the late 1980s the outlook for the carbon fibre industry ...