Carbon Fiber

Carbon fiber is a reinforcing material made of extremely thin filaments, each only a few micrometers across, composed of tightly bonded carbon crystals aligned along the fiber axis. It was developed for practical aerospace use in the 1960s, notably by researchers at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough in Britain working from a rayon and later polyacrylonitrile precursor, and is used almost always as a reinforcement woven into a resin matrix to form a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer composite, since the bare fiber alone is strong only along its length. Per unit of weight, the resulting composite can exceed the tensile strength of high-grade steel while weighing roughly a quarter as much, at a manufacturing cost far higher than either steel or aluminum, which has confined its widest use to aerospace structures, high-performance vehicles and sporting goods where the weight saving justifies the price.