Company dynamics

Why are composite materials widely used with glass fiber better than carbon fiber

• 2024-01-11
• Company dynamics

Many people have heard of the famous name of carbon fiber, which emphasizes the high level of technology and application of carbon fiber by saying, "Without Japan's carbon fiber, China cannot build stealth fighter jets.". However, for ordinary people and common applications in our daily lives, glass fiber is more useful than carbon fiber.

Disadvantages of carbon fiber

The high-tech properties of carbon fiber are beyond doubt, otherwise it would not have become the exclusive material for airplanes, let alone the capital of Western countries. From the perspective of vehicles, the earliest use of carbon fiber was in F1 racing cars, which have the advantages of high strength and low weight. Even being one kilogram lighter may become the key to winning.

As the "king of materials", carbon fiber has a strength 7 to 9 times that of ordinary steel, but its weight is only a quarter of the latter.

Not only that, carbon fiber is also very resistant to high and low temperatures. It can withstand temperatures as low as -180 ℃ and up to 3000 ℃. At the same time, it also has high-quality properties such as oil resistance, acid resistance, and corrosion resistance.

Especially when applied to military aircraft, carbon fiber can effectively absorb radar waves, thereby reducing the possibility of aircraft being detected by radar, leading to the famous "stealth" technology.

However, carbon fiber has always been able to only serve as a material for specialized fields such as defense, aviation, and luxury cars, and has been unable to provide value for the most widespread applications in ordinary people and daily life. This is mainly because carbon fiber has two major drawbacks.

The first point is that although carbon fiber has high strength, it is also very brittle. If carbon fiber is used as the main load-bearing structure, its advantages are irreplaceable. But if used for covering parts, it is similar to ordinary engineering plastics.

Because the raw material of carbon fiber is strands thinner than hair, in order to turn it into usable material, it is necessary to weave the strands into carbon cloth, and then stack them layer by layer to make the desired finished product.

So carbon fiber can be seen as a layer of cloth. If you use a hammer to smash it, it is often difficult to form a depression like hitting a steel plate because carbon fiber has a certain degree of elasticity. But if the head of the chopsticks is sharpened, this piece of cloth can be said to be vulnerable to a single blow and can be penetrated in one go.

How to replace carbon fiber with glass fiber

The second drawback of carbon fiber is its high cost. The cost of carbon fiber for cars is around $20 per kilogram, which is approximately 160 yuan per kilogram. Not suitable for daily use. However, the price of fiberglass can be reduced to 9 yuan/kg, which can be used as a commonly used material in daily life and industrial production.

In addition, although the strength of glass fiber is not as high as that of carbon fiber, its comprehensive performance is very strong, and its brittleness is not as high as that of carbon fiber. Therefore, it can be added to many commonly used materials. Nowadays, this composite material made of glass fiber is ubiquitous, from small household appliances to large cars and ships, and even fan blades. Especially with the addition of glass fiber, PC materials exhibit superior performance and expand the applicability of plastics.

Due to the fact that fiberglass itself is a very delicate product, damaged materials can easily prick people's fingers and skin. Therefore, when purchasing related products, it is important to identify companies with guaranteed quality.

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