Cloth of woven carbon filaments
Image details
Contributor:
Jason Bye / Alamy Stock PhotoImage ID:
AWNWHJFile size:
49.8 MB (1.6 MB Compressed download)Releases:
Model - no | Property - noDo I need a release?Dimensions:
5120 x 3401 px | 43.3 x 28.8 cm | 17.1 x 11.3 inches | 300dpiDate taken:
14 March 2008More information:
Carbon fiber or carbon fibre (also sometimes called graphite fiber) is a material consisting of long thin sheets of graphite-like carbon, packed to form a fiber. It is commonly used in composite materials such as carbon fiber reinforced plastic (which is often also called carbon fiber). It has the highest specific tensile strength of all the reinforced materials (composite materials), and it has a high strength to weight ratio and low coefficient of thermal expansion. The density of carbon fiber is also much much lower than the density of steel. Carbon fiber takes the form of several thousand long, thin strands of material which are mostly composed of carbon atoms. In 1958, Dr. Roger Bacon created the first high performance carbon fibers at the Parma Technical Center outside of Cleveland, OH. Bacon's carbon fibers were mainly graphite whiskers that were sheets of graphite rolled into scrolls; they contained graphite sheets that were continuous over the entire length of the graphite filament. After the development of carbon fiber, Bacon had estimated the cost to make high performance carbon fiber at "$10 million per pound." Bacon's development was a remarkable achievement at the time, and scientists and manufacturers were determined to find a cheaper and efficient way of producing the fibers. On the 14th January 1969, Carr Reinforcements wove the first ever Carbon fibre fabric in the world. Carbon fibers are the closest to asbestos in a number of properties. Each carbon filament thread is a bundle of many thousand carbon filaments. A single such filament is a thin tube with a diameter of 5–8 micrometers and consists almost exclusively of carbon.