Carbon fibre based composites show various advantages (light weight, less prone to corrosion, etc..) over Steel and other structural materials. For example Carbon fibre composites are already being used in cars and aerospace industries, do you think they can be used in buildings, bridges, etc...
The question is general, so the direct answer is "no":
CFRP will not "generally" replace steel ...
... but it may do so in certain applications, and these may well be numerous. Michael Heine gave a lot of good examples. However, look for Prof. Hufenbach often-cited statement (which has in fact been made by many people, probably also in parallel) - "The right material in the right place at the right price and with the right ecology".
If you follow this thought, the future is likely to be hybrid, or multi-material, and the proportions of indivdiual materials like steel or CFRP will shift with time even for a
given application: There are the usual boundary conditions, e.g. with respect to the link between cost, process and series size, which may be altered e.g. by introduction of new processes or optimization of old ones, there are raw material prices which may even be politically influenced, and there is a ecology, which as a cost factor is very much determined by regulations .... and there are of course certain aspects steel can provide, which CFRP can't as well. Anisotropy in CFRP has been mentioned, which can be employed to advantage of course but may be a problem in other scenarios, impact performance may still turn out to be an issue in aerospace, and potential also in automotive applications (repair, damage detection, crashworthiness etc.), high temperature performance of steel vs. CFRP etc. And naturally there is also the development potential steel may still have: When Audi introduced aluminium on a larger scale in the A8 and later the A2, it turned out that steel could in fact compete: There were the ULSAB projects, and there were the developments towards TRIP and TWIP steels, to name but a few.
All such developments can be imagined for the building industry, too, hence there is surely a potential and thus a market for the material, but none to replace all that's there today.
Lest I forget to mention, if you would like to have an overview of recent developments in terms of materials for transport applications, why not have a look at this ;-)
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-3527327878.html
Hope you find it interesting, even though the building topic is not covered.
i dont think so,
"Fiber reinforced composite having strength along the fibre direction".
Fibre reinforced concrete is already in use. Generally, glass fibres are used in that. Carbon fibres are expensive and have poor impact strength. So these are not viable economically.
Have a look to the links......CFRP will come
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i8
I believe the new Boeing dreamliner is largely built on carbon fiber composite materials.
Boeing and Airbus are using CFRP for large structural parts see also the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner
see also at Airbus.....they built a all composite wing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350
Carbon fibre reinforced concrete and constructions with this material you can find at the universities of Aachen and Dresden... see also "Tudalit" ...it is an association and a tradename
http://tudalit.de/
"Carbocrete" is a tradename of the SGL Group for carbonfibre reinforced concrete. Ideas for applications are initiated last year... the material is now more and more recognized by the architects..
http://www.jeccomposites.com/news/composites-news/sgl-group-organizes-idea-contest-new-composite-material-carbocrete
The question is general, so the direct answer is "no":
CFRP will not "generally" replace steel ...
... but it may do so in certain applications, and these may well be numerous. Michael Heine gave a lot of good examples. However, look for Prof. Hufenbach often-cited statement (which has in fact been made by many people, probably also in parallel) - "The right material in the right place at the right price and with the right ecology".
If you follow this thought, the future is likely to be hybrid, or multi-material, and the proportions of indivdiual materials like steel or CFRP will shift with time even for a
given application: There are the usual boundary conditions, e.g. with respect to the link between cost, process and series size, which may be altered e.g. by introduction of new processes or optimization of old ones, there are raw material prices which may even be politically influenced, and there is a ecology, which as a cost factor is very much determined by regulations .... and there are of course certain aspects steel can provide, which CFRP can't as well. Anisotropy in CFRP has been mentioned, which can be employed to advantage of course but may be a problem in other scenarios, impact performance may still turn out to be an issue in aerospace, and potential also in automotive applications (repair, damage detection, crashworthiness etc.), high temperature performance of steel vs. CFRP etc. And naturally there is also the development potential steel may still have: When Audi introduced aluminium on a larger scale in the A8 and later the A2, it turned out that steel could in fact compete: There were the ULSAB projects, and there were the developments towards TRIP and TWIP steels, to name but a few.
All such developments can be imagined for the building industry, too, hence there is surely a potential and thus a market for the material, but none to replace all that's there today.
Lest I forget to mention, if you would like to have an overview of recent developments in terms of materials for transport applications, why not have a look at this ;-)
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-3527327878.html
Hope you find it interesting, even though the building topic is not covered.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Materials Science