What is Carbon Fiber, Really?
Actually, the same substance used to make sweaters, blankets and other familiar things in life is also behind this cutting-edge material "carbon fiber."
Carbon fiber is literally a fiber made of carbon. The carbon content is 90% or more for carbon fibers of standard modulus of elasticity, and virtually 100% for carbon fibers of high modulus of elasticity. Nitrogen is the primary element other than carbon.
Carbon fiber is produced by baking polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fiber, pitch fiber or other organic fiber in an inert atmosphere to dissociate elements other than carbon. At least 90% of commercially available carbon fibers are PAN carbon fibers made of PAN fiber, because PAN fiber is better than pitch carbon fiber in terms of the balance of performance, cost, ease of use, etc. Toray manufactures PAN carbon fibers. In fact, we lead the global carbon fiber industry as the number-one carbon fiber producer in performance, quality and volume.
The two key features of carbon fiber are its excellent strength and light weight. The specific gravity of carbon fiber is around 1.8, which is approx. one-fourth of iron's specific gravity of 7.8. Carbon fiber is also significantly lighter than aluminum and glass fiber having a specific gravity of 2.7 and 2.5, respectively. In addition, carbon fiber has excellent strength and modulus of elasticity: its specific strength calculated by dividing the tensile strength by the specific gravity, is approx. 10 times the specific strength of iron, while its specific modulus of elasticity calculated by dividing the modulus of elongation by the specific gravity, is approx. 7 times that of iron. That's why carbon fiber is a favorite lightweight material to replace conventional metal materials. Carbon fiber has various other characteristics such as not failing due to fatigue, not rusting, and chemically and thermally stable. It is a highly reliable material whose characteristics are stable over long time even under severe conditions.
Now, Boeing 787 and other jet airplanes have emerged that are significantly lighter, more fuel-efficient, more flexible in terms of design, and more comfortable, thanks to their body, main wings, tail plane and other structural members made of carbon fiber composite materials benefiting from the aforementioned characteristics of carbon fiber.
Carbon Fiber and Global Environment
Carbon fiber is an environmentally friendly material. Carbon fiber is manufactured by refining oil to obtain acrylonitrile and then spinning this acrylonitrile and baking the spun yarn. Due to the high baking temperature of 1000℃ or more, 20 tons of CO2 are emitted to manufacture 1 ton of carbon fiber.
Carbon fiber offers excellent specific strength and specific modulus of elasticity, and its market is expected to grow significantly.
Carbon fiber contributes significantly to curbing of global warming.
The environmental impact of carbon fiber was evaluated using the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) method over is life cycle from digging of material to use and scrapping of carbon fiber product. The result is as follows. When the body structure of a car is made 30% lighter using carbon fiber, 50 tons of CO2 will be reduced per 1 ton of carbon fiber over a life cycle of 10 years; when the fuselage structure of aircraft is made 20% lighter using carbon fiber, on the other hand, 1400 tons of CO2 will be reduced under the same condition.
If passenger cars (42 million vehicles owned, excluding light automobiles) and passenger aircraft (430 planes owned) in Japan adopt carbon fiber to reduce weight and therefore improve fuel economy, 22 million tons of CO2 will be saved. This corresponds to approx. 1.5% of total CO2 emissions in Japan in 2006 (1.3 billion tons), which clearly shows why this cutting-edge material is a "trump card" in reducing CO2 and contributing to the global environment.
TORAYCA® Everywhere
Toray's carbon fiber TORAYCA® is used in various applications where its light weight and strength are exploited.
The specific applications include sporting equipment requiring light weight, ease of use and high performance, aerospace materials that must be light and functional enough for use in air/space travel, and various general industrial applications such as pressure containers, cars, windmills, ships and civil engineering/construction.
These applications continue to grow and expand with the progress of carbon fiber and carbon fiber forming technology.
Sports
1. Fishing rods
Light but strong rods offering excellent vibration damping transmit the response of the fish effectively.
It is generally said that "thin, light and strong" fishing rods are the best. The use that is highly required is "High rigidity and Weight reduction." That's because fishing rods must be appropriately sized for ease of holding and light, very rigid, easy to tackle, feel the response from the fish, and take in the fish. In particular, "sweetfish fishing rods" used in Japan from ancient times are long and heavy (bamboo rods each span 6.2 m, weigh 1.5 kg and have an outer diameter of approx. 50 mm), and must be handled with both hands, which is fun but a lot of trouble. With the development of carbon fiber offering high specific modulus of elasticity, however, these fishing rods have become lighter and are now called "carbon rods" and considered premium/sports fishing rods along with "crucian carp rods and mountain stream rods."
Historically, Toray's TORAYCA® was adopted in 1972 by the world's first sweetfish fishing rod "Seiki sweetfish" by Olympic that used TORAYCA®/glass textile and phenol resin sheet based on the winding method. This fishing rod spanned 7.2 m, only one half the length of the conventional "glass rod," and became much lighter at approx. 600 g reportedly. The Seiki sweetfish was a big hit despite costing four times as much with a price tag of 50,000 yen. In the following year, the Seiki sweetfish adopted TORAYCA®-only textile and utilized unidirectional prepreg for further weight reduction, allowing TORAYCA® to make a solid inroad into the fishing rod industry. On the other hand, fishing rods using unidirectional prepreg with anisotropy had an issue of "vulnerability to crushing" due to insufficient peripheral strength. As a solution, a glass cloth called "Scrim Cloth," which was originally electro was electronic substrate material, was utilized to step up peripheral strength, and use of Scrim Cloth also led to improved shape retention and ease of handling of unidirectional prepreg. Thereafter, the peripheral reinforcement material to "prevent crushing" benefited from the development of an extremely thin version of TORAYCA® prepreg (approx. 30 µm), which led to the realization of the so-called "100% carbon rod" the industry was waiting for at the time. Currently, extremely thin prepreg as slim as approx. 10 µm is being produced and this technology is a very important part of "preventing crushing" of the rod. To respond to the demand for lighter fishing rods, Toray developed unidirectional torayca® prepreg products of wide-ranging thicknesses, high fiber contents, developing resin, etc., and in 1997 premiered a 10-m long type weighing 300 g. In 2004, a product having an outer diameter of approx. 26 mm, practical length of 9.5 m and weight of 240 g was released.
Lighter carbon fiber rods have the following advantages, among others:
- Because they are lighter and thinner, these rods can be handled by one hand with ease.
- Their light weight prevents the user from getting tired.
- Longer rods cover wider fishing areas.
- More sensitive to the response from fish.
- Easy to taken in fish.
Making avid anglers increasingly satisfied year after year, these carbon fiber fishing rods made "sweetfish fishing" a mass recreation instead of a niche sport, created a new market, and added more excitement to sweetfish fishing. The benefits of adopting carbon (CFRP) to Japan's traditional "sweetfish fishing rods" naturally led to product application of TORAYCA® to all types of fishing rods used in ocean, river and lake fishing, helping grow and stimulate the industry. Today, general-purpose rods such as surf fishing rods and casting rods use high-strength types of TORAYCA® having a modulus of elasticity of 24 or 30 tf/mm2, while sweetfish, crucian carp and mountain stream fishing rods use high-elasticity types having a modulus of elasticity of 40 to 65 tf/mm2. Optimal rods for different fishing applications are being designed and sold.
Clearly, our carbon fiber TORAYCA® established itself as an innovative material that changed the way we look at fishing and continues to support the growth and progress of fishing as a sport.
2. Golf club shafts
Carbon fiber shafts are longer but light, so they can produce high head speeds and longer carries.
Golf clubs must be able to "carry the ball further precisely in the desired direction." To increase the "carry," it is important to make the club as light as possible to increase the head speed and raise the initial speed of the ball, and to do this, the shaft must be made lighter. In doing so, one key challenge is to maintain enough strength to prevent breaking. Under the brand name of TORAYCA®, standard-elasticity high-strength yarns with a modulus of elasticity of 24 tf/mm2 and moderate-elasticity high-strength yarns with a modulus of elasticity of 30 tf/mm2 have been developed, to achieve straight materials offering good bending strength. In addition, there has been a need in recent years for lightweight shafts that not only have bending strength, but are also resistant to breaking due to "insufficient torsional strength," which led us to improve the elongation and strength of the high-elasticity material in the bias layer to achieve higher performance.
As for the other required performance of "directionality," it is important to make the shaft to have "resistant to twisting (improved torsional rigidity)" to prevent the directionality of the ball from dropping due to twisting of the shaft that occurs when the center axis of the shaft does not match the ball hitting point of the head. Torsional rigidity becomes the lowest when the layering angle is 0° or 90°and becomes the highest when this angle is ±45°; accordingly, a ±45° angle is incorporated into layering as a "twisting reduction measure," and the high-elasticity yarn with a modulus of elasticity of 40 tf/mm2 has taken roots as a standard anti-twisting bias material. Currently, torsional characteristics equivalent to those of a steel shaft are realized with the use of carbon fiber with a high modulus of elasticity of 46 tf/mm2 or more.
Historically, golf shafts initially used hickory wood (known for high strength and impact absorption) and other natural materials; thereafter, steel shafts appeared in the 1920s, and carbon shafts became the mainstream in the 1970s and have remained so until today.
After Shakespeare developed the first carbon shaft in 1972, other manufacturers followed suit. Carbon shafts became the darling of the media in Japan because G.Brewer from the U.S. who won the Pacific Club Masters Tournament was using CFRP clubs made by Aldila. In 1973, Olympic released a Japan-made carbon shaft using TORAYCA®/glass fiber textile. The initial product had a spec of 85 g/12° torque, but in the following year, a100% TORAYCA® product with a spec of 77 g/6.9° torque appeared and created the big boom dubbed the "black shaft" revolution.
A sheet-wound shaft using prepreg is basically constituted by an internal layer angled at ±45° (called "angle layer" or "bias layer"), lengthwise layer angled at 0° (called "straight material"), and reinforcement/thickness adding material at the head hosel. The shaft characteristics such as "flexibility, torque, weight and kick point" are determined by how these layers are combined. Carbon fiber allows these performance characteristics to be optimally designed with minimum weight, which was not possible with conventional metal materials, by combining desired layering angle, thickness, etc.
To adjust the flexibility, torque, weight, kick point and other elements of the golf shaft this way according to the physical strength of each golfer to give the club a good carry with excellent directionality, the characteristics of carbon fiber were utilized for design optimization, and various types of shafts designed for top golf pros and hard hitters to seniors and female golfers have adopted carbon fiber. Today, virtually 100% of wood clubs and 65% of iron clubs are made of carbon fiber. Undoubtedly this will be continue to be an important material to support the evolution of golf.
3. Tennis rackets
Significantly increasing the sweet spot of the racket without adding weight, to make it easier to hit the ball with the racket.
Tennis rackets were initially made of wood (ash tree, maple, cherry, bamboo, etc.), and later of steel and aluminum alloys, but in 1974 the first CFRP racket made of carbon fiber was released in the U.S. In Japan, Kawasaki Racket released the "Ambitious" comprising a wooden frame with TORAYCA® cured plate attached to it in 1975, and in 1976 the company introduced the first-ever 100% carbon racket called the "Ruler." Japanese manufacturers developed and released CFRP rackets one after another. CFRP rackets had such features as fast ball, good durability and high design adaptability, but they were expensive and also their light weight, which is the greatest advantage of the CFRP racket, did not benefit the users much and therefore CFRP rackets did not sell well.
In 1976, however, the U.S. manufacturer Prince introduced an oversized racket having a larger sweet spot and racket face, by making the most of CFRP's "light weight and high strength," and since the stylish racket proved the greater design flexibility of CFRP, the use of CFRP for tennis rackets increased dramatically. The so-called "Dekarake" oversized racket that fully utilized the features of CFRP had a large racket face of 110 in2 at the same weight, compared to the mainstream racket face of 70 in2. It became a much talked-about racket having a significantly larger sweet spot and offering greater ease of hitting the ball.
Thereafter, rackets whose frame was almost as twice as thick as that of a conventional racket and also more rigid, were introduced, and since the higher (harder) frame rigidity reduced the flexing after impact and allowed extra energy to be transmitted to the ball, the ball bounced stronger. Utilization of CFRP made this performance improvement possible without making the rackets heavier than before.
Aerospace
1. Space
Launch a rocket or shuttle carrying a satellite, etc., into space requires an enormous amount of energy and money, and there is a need to reduce the weight, even by 1 g. In addition, rockets and shuttles are exposed to strong cosmic rays/UV rays in high vacuum, and must use materials having excellent dimensional stability in an environment subject to extremely large temperature shifts. Carbon fiber composite materials offering excellent specific strength/specific modulus of elasticity and allowing for weight reduction through anisotropy-based optimal design, are most suited for this weight reduction, and since their coefficient of thermal expansion is approx. one-tenth that of metals, carbon fiber composite materials are extremely stable dimensionally under temperature shifts; in all aspects, they are best material for space applications.
Currently CFRP is used for the top satellite-carrying section, spaces in between, fixed rocket booster case, etc., of the rocket as well as for many parts of artificial satellites such as hull frame, solar cell paddle, antenna support and arm. Space shuttles also use carbon fiber composite materials offering excellent heat resistance, for the black panels at the bottom in order to withstand the high heat they receive when entering the earth's atmosphere again.
Some areas require super-high elastic yarns with a modulus of elasticity of over 70 tf/mm2 in space, and pitch carbon fiber is used in these areas; however, PAN carbon fiber must be used in areas requiring compressive strength and tensile strength, and PAN fiber contributes to the size increase of artificial satellites, rockets, etc. As more communication satellites, etc., are scheduled to be launched, spacecraft is expected to grow as an important market for PAN carbon fiber.
2. Aircraft
Carbon fiber composite materials play an indispensable part in the weight reduction and performance improvement of fuselage.
Just like spacecraft, aircraft is another field where weight reduction is very important and use of carbon fiber began early. In the 1970s, carbon fiber was adopted for spoilers, elevators and other secondary structural materials and proven effective. In the late 1980's, carbon fiber found its way into primary structural materials such as tail plane and cabin beams. U.S.Boeing and E.U. Airbus, which are large aircraft manufacturers, have been increasing the amount of carbon fiber used per aircraft with every new model, and both the large-size Airbus A380 that began serving the sky in 2007, and the mid-size Boeing 787 premiered in 2009, use more than 30 tons of CFRP per aircraft. In particular, the Boeing 787 uses CFRP for around 50% of its structure weight, and the outer panels covering the main wings and body of this breakthrough aircraft are all made of carbon.
Carbon fiber composite materials are not used in engine parts that become hot, etc., but the engine's fan containment case, blades, etc., use carbon fiber and as the issues of fuel economy and CO2 emissions will likely become increasingly important, utilization of carbon fiber in other areas including engines should accelerated dramatically.
Vehicles
1. Cars
Carbon fiber contributes significantly not only to performance improvement of cars, but also to protecting the driver.
In auto mobile applications, utilization of CFRP began in racing cars. CFRP allows for further weight reduction, and it is also essential in ensuring the driver's safety as the high-strength, high-rigidity material for the monocock frame. F1 racing cars use CFRP for all structural members other than the monocock frame, and the driver is protected not only by the high-speed stability of these CFRP members, but also by the high crash energy absorptivity of CFRP.
The high performance of CFRP proven on racing cars was incorporated into luxury cars, and CFRP is increasingly adopted by European cars, etc. In Japan, we produce hoods, spoilers, etc., for passenger cars and CFRP is also found in not only structural members, but also outer panel members requiring high esthetic performance. CFRP is also fast making its way into the field of propeller shafts manufactured by the filament winding method, to help reduce weight, but also improve safety through improved impact absorption. Toray's propeller shafts are already adopted to around 1 million vehicles.
As use of carbon fiber to automobile applications makes rapid progress, Toray is actively developing forming technology to support and accelerate this trend.
Among automobile applications, tires with carbon fiber sidewalls to improve cornering stability are already available for general passenger cars in the U.S., and motorcycles adopting a carbon-fiber reinforced rubber belt instead of a metal chain are also on the market.
As explained above, carbon fiber is used more in various members of automobiles including motorcycles, and this growth trend will likely accelerate as development continues not only in the field of conventional mainstream composite materials based on thermosetting resin, but also in the field of composite materials based on thermoplastic resin which is excellent in recycling.
2. Ships
Carbon fiber is an ideal material for ships to reduce hull vibration, maintain a good environment for wireless communication to/from ships, and so on.
Utilization of carbon fiber is making progress in the field of boats, yachts, large vessels and other ships. The most important reason for using carbon fiber is that this material improves speed or fuel economy by way of reducing weight. For example, hull weight can be reduced by approx. 30% if entirely made of CFRP, not GFRP.
Ships traditionally used glass fiber composite materials (GFRP), and since the forms of textile and other intermediate base materials used by GFRP and their forming methods are close to those applicable to CFRP, GFRP-made ship parts can be easily replaced with CFRP counterparts. While epoxy resin is used in most aircraft and sports applications, the majority of ship applications use unsaturated polyester or vinyl ester resin due to their historical use of GFRP. Accordingly, carbon fibers offering greater bonding strength with vinyl ester resin have been developed and utilized in a wide range of ship applications.
Not only CFRP has high specific strength and high modulus of elasticity, CFRP's vibration damping performance can be utilized, as well, to raise the natural vibration frequency (resonance point) of the hull, while reducing the hull vibration caused by engine and auxiliaries operations, by using CFRP where the engine and auxiliaries (pump, etc.) are mounted. Furthermore, CFRP's conductivity can be utilized to enclose the walls of the wireless communication room with carbon fiber composite material, for example, to achieve shielding effect of 40 dB or more. This means that, while CFRP transmit electromagnetic waves and may therefore interfere with clear radio communications to/from ships, there are solutions to these problems.
Also, hybrid composite materials combining carbon fiber with glass fiber or aramid fiber textile, etc., are used in large quantities on ships. CFRP is used in increasingly more design applications to achieve the target performance/cost, through optimal design with composite materials, such as using conventional glass fiber composite materials and applying carbon fiber only in those areas requiring rigidity.
3. Bicycles
Achieving nearly 30% weight reduction using aluminum frame. Carbon fiber is also drawing the attention in the field of bicycle applications.
Bicycling constitutes a fast growing application field among other sports applications. Full-scale bicycle road races are major events in Europe, but in Japan, too, we are seeing more road bikes dashing on special paths and mountain bikes conquering mountain courses and other offroad terrains in the past several years, where bicycles using carbon fiber are featured as "carbon bikes" in domestic cycle magazines. A bicycle consists of "framework structures" such as the frame and fork handle bars, and "components" transmitting/controlling drive force such a the wheels, cranks, gears, transmission break and brake lever. TORAYCA® textile and prepreg products found its way into front forks developed by a Taiwanese bicycle manufacturer in the mid 1980s, and wheel disks, advanced carbon monocock frames, etc., began emerging. Thereafter, application of carbon fiber in monocock bodies itself stalled due to the need for large-scale facility to accommodate frame-size mold and issues relating to control technology, etc., but frames connecting carbon pipes (eight pipes, or also called tubes, constituting the front triangle and rear triangle) with lugs (joints) were subsequently developed by utilizing the pipe forming technology such as golf shaft, rod, and racket involving unidirectional prepreg and textile prepreg that were developed for golf shafts, fishing rods, rackets, etc., and use of carbon fiber to mountain bikes and road bikes progressed in Taiwan, Italy, etc. Application of carbon fiber to wheel rims, cranks and other components also accelerated through use of prepreg, contributing to improvement of the frame requiring weight reduction and rigidity improvement. Currently a complete production bike using carbon frame can weigh 7 kg or less, compared to one using aluminum frame weighing 9.5 kg, which is a weight reduction of nearly 30%. As the progress and actual application of frame production technology and progress of design/evaluation technology drive weight reduction and improve mass producibility, further application efforts are made to utilize the characteristic light weight/high rigidity of carbon fiber TORAYCA®
Civil engineering / Construction
Carbon fiber is drawing the attention as a new building material replacing iron which is lightweight, strong, and does not rust.
Carbon fiber is lightweight and strong, permits such execution method as impregnating resin in carbon fiber textile and then curing it onsite, eliminates the need for heavy machinery to attach metal panels, and these advantages make carbon fiber the best material also for restore/reinforcement applications.
In particular, restore and reinforcements using carbon fiber were carried out across the nation as the Great Kobe Earthquake highlighted the importance of antiseismic reinforcement. In addition to having high specific strength and high modulus of elasticity, carbon fiber does not rust and deteriorates less than metals in a corrosive environment near the beach, etc.
Carbon fiber restore/reinforcements are largely divided into methods using textile and methods using cured and blanked sheet (laminate) gained by pultrusion molding. Both types of methods involve attaching textile or laminate on concrete surface, etc., using epoxy resin and curing it at room temperature.
Textile conforming to any shape is suitable for smoke stacks, columns and other cylindrical or flexing members/areas, but attaching laminate is better for floor boards and other flat plate because it eliminates the need for stacking multiple layers and saves time.
These methods are being developed and promoted by the SR-CF Method Study Group and Laminate Method Study Group, etc., and their application is making rapid progress through these study groups. Currently Japan, the earthquake capital of the world, is leading the world in carbon fiber restore/reinforcements, but these applications are also finding their way into Europe and America, Asia and other parts of the world.
Environment/energy
1. Wind generation
Carbon fiber is also ideal for wind generation requiring larger, rigid blades. Carbon fiber composite materials are also friendly to the global environment.
Installation of wind generation facilities is picking up pace primarily in Europe, as wind generation is one leading source of clean energy. Wind generators traditionally used glass fiber composite materials for their rotary blades, but larger blades are needed for better wind generation efficiency and large-scale generation on limited land. Larger blades present greater risk of hitting the support column and getting damaged by deflecting while turning and also due to wind force; accordingly, use of carbon fiber composite materials offering high rigidity is a must.
Currently blades exceeding 50 m (for windmills of 100 m or more in diameter) are installed and their size is increasing further, and a lot of carbon fiber is used in these large blades. Carbon fiber is used for the beam positioned at the center of the blade to determine the rigidity of the blade, and this carbon fiber beam is combined with the GFRP surface to constitute the blade. Since efficient, clean wind generation requires the high specific strength and high specific modulus of elasticity of carbon fiber, more carbon fiber is used per windmill and consequently wind generation promises to grow significantly as a key application field for carbon fiber.
2. High-pressure containers
Make the fuel tanks of natural gas vehicles lighter to improve the stability of these vehicles. Carbon fiber composite materials help ensure safety in life.
Many trucks and buses carrying a natural gas (CNG) tank are already on the road, and self-contained breathing apparatuses (SCBA) used by fire-fighters and in medical applications widely adopt lightweight, carbon fiber tanks, as well. These tanks weigh around one-third of conventional iron tanks. Particularly with buses, a CNG tank is carried on top of the vehicle body to keep the floor low, but since an iron tank is not only heavy but it also has a high center of gravity, a CFRP tank is needed to ensure safety by preventing the bus from rolling over. These high-pressure gas containers are normally manufactured by the filament winding method and are constituted by an aluminum or plastic liner with carbon fiber wrapped around it. Burst pressure, which is a key performance of any high-pressure container, is dominantly controlled by the tensile strength of carbon fiber, which means that high-pressure containers offer an application field where the high specific strength of carbon fiber can be utilized most effectively. For fuel cell vehicles currently under development to be able to drive 500 km with one charge of hydrogen gas just like gasoline vehicles can with one refueling of gasoline, a high-pressure hydrogen of 70 MPa (CHG) tank is required, and carbon fiber is the only material that allows for manufacturing of such high-pressure tank which is also light enough to be installed in an automobile. Clearly, CNG, SCBA and CHG tanks and carbon fiber pressure containers represent a key application field which already accounts for a high percentage of general industrial applications and which is expected to grow further.
Mobile devices
Carbon fiber is used in the challenge to create thinner, lighter mobile IT terminals.
We want lighter mobile devices because we carry them around.
Reduction of thickness and weight is now a requirement for mobile IT terminals. Toray's carbon fiber helps meet this requirement. CFRP housings made of Toray's carbon fiber are adopted for notebook PCs and tablet terminals and contributing to the weight reduction of products. In the field of mobile devices that are becoming increasingly lighter, carbon fiber is drawing the attention for its excellent material characteristics.
Product Lineup
Fiber
Toray's TORAYCA® yarn is a high-performance carbon fiber made of polyacrylonitrile (PAN). After releasing its TORAYCA® T300 in 1971, Toray has been manufacturing high-performance carbon fiber longer than any other company in the world, providing a number of high-quality, stable products.
With its excellent characteristics, TORAYCA® composite materials are contribution significantly to wide-ranging fields including aerospace, industrial, sport/leisure, etc.
Toray's new high-strength and high-modulus carbon fiber TORAYCA® T1100G solves the age-old challenge of achieving high strength and high modulus in recent years.
Fabrics
TORAYCA® cloth is a textile using carbon fiber. Shaped like sheet, this cloth has excellent characteristic of processability and easy to impregnate resin.
TORAYCA® cloth is used in reinforcement materials for civil engineering/construction, sporting applications such as bicycles, and aircraft members, and its applications are expanding further. As the world's number-one carbon fiber manufacturer, Toray is actively growing textile business.
Prepreg
Toray is also focused on business development of the prepreg intermediate product of its TORAYCA® series (sheet-shaped carbon fiber impregnated with resin). Offering the quality features of TORAYCA®, the prepreg is widely used in aircraft applications such as the tail planes and floor beams of Boeing 777s, as well as sporting applications including golf club shafts, fishing rods, tennis racket frames.
Toray developed new matrix resins by applying the NANOALLOY® technology in recent years.
Furthermore, the composite combining the resins with the TORAYCA® T1100G has achieved higher strength and modulus of elasticity.
Source: Toray Industries
Fiber
Toray's TORAYCA® yarn is a high-performance carbon fiber made of polyacrylonitrile (PAN). After releasing its TORAYCA® T300 in 1971, Toray has been manufacturing high-performance carbon fiber longer than any other company in the world, providing a number of high-quality, stable products.
With its excellent characteristics, TORAYCA® composite materials are contribution significantly to wide-ranging fields including aerospace, industrial, sport/leisure, etc.
Toray's new high-strength and high-modulus carbon fiber TORAYCA® T1100G solves the age-old challenge of achieving high strength and high modulus in recent years.
Fabrics
TORAYCA® cloth is a textile using carbon fiber. Shaped like sheet, this cloth has excellent characteristic of processability and easy to impregnate resin.
TORAYCA® cloth is used in reinforcement materials for civil engineering/construction, sporting applications such as bicycles, and aircraft members, and its applications are expanding further. As the world's number-one carbon fiber manufacturer, Toray is actively growing textile business.
Prepreg
Toray is also focused on business development of the prepreg intermediate product of its TORAYCA® series (sheet-shaped carbon fiber impregnated with resin). Offering the quality features of TORAYCA®, the prepreg is widely used in aircraft applications such as the tail planes and floor beams of Boeing 777s, as well as sporting applications including golf club shafts, fishing rods, tennis racket frames.
Toray developed new matrix resins by applying the NANOALLOY® technology in recent years.
Furthermore, the composite combining the resins with the TORAYCA® T1100G has achieved higher strength and modulus of elasticity.
Source: Toray Industries
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