<i>> While composites might seem like a futuristic technology, in many ways, they hark back to millions of years of human and even pre-human material technology. Wood, after all, is the original composite material, as it’s composed of long and short fibers glued together by other substances—much like modern synthetic composites are often made up of carbon fiber held together by epoxy resins. Wood was a chief enabler of the success of our species, and it exhibits many of the advantages and disadvantages of composites.</i><p>Not to nitpick too much, but while wood is "technically" a composite material made up of fiber embedded in lignin, I don't think it's very useful to include it under the broad category of composite materials. Engineered woods like plywood and cross-laminated timber definitely are, but it's more useful to classify regular wood as an organic raw material rather than a composite.<p>The first composite material humans had any experience with was probably silcrete. It's naturally occurring but ancient humans figured out how to strengthen it by heat treating it in a fire (80-160 kYa). The first time humans intentionally made a composite material is adobe/mudbrick (11 kYa), wattle and daub (6 kYa), plywood in Mesopotamia (5.4 kYa), cob (4 kYa), and finally Romans developed something resembling concrete (I dont remember kYa).
Nitpick time:<p>> Modern composites, starting with Bakelite<p>AFAIK Bakelite is a resin, not a composite.<p>No mention of fiberglass, which had been used for many decades before carbon fiber went into widespread use.<p>> composites—which are amalgamations of a variety of fibers, embedded in a variety of plastics<p>Steel reinforced concrete is a composite and doesn’t fit this definition.
One of my biggest everyday QoL upgrade is men's casual pants finally getting elastane.<p>E: not just elastane but performance fabrics from athleisure in general, good moisture/odour/temperature control, easy to maintain etc. Some people like break in into their cotton/denim classics, but performance fabrics tend to not need break in in at all.
A swing and a miss. The future of materials is going back to plant fiber; wood, hemp, etc. There will be plenty of fancy composite materials for specialty applications; but our world has been made out of plastic for generations now and updated, improved plant fiber materials will replace it as the affordable, more sustainable, and equally functional alternative.
It's been amazing to see how it's affected sailing and other water sports over the past 2-3 of decades. Cuben fiber sails, Carbon-fiber hulls, hydrofoils on everything; something happened and then inflatable paddle boards were everywhere.
Interesting article, if on the advertising side of things. I've done some hobby work with some basic composites and they're really neat to play with. Even so, I itch at the idea of bolts made out of composites; there are plastics and resins that don't creep under <i>some</i> conditions, but I wonder if the space magic they're describing actually...works.
To write this whole article and not even mention circular production practices (eg full lifestyle resource management) and our resource constrained planetary context seems arrogant and stupid and undermines any heady excitement for this “progression”. What a junk article.
> All of that is possible because composites, while they have their challenges, are often able to perform just as well as high-strength metal parts, but with a fraction of the weight.<p>That's what Rush (who perished in the Titan submersible) also thought....
Why aren't more regular cars made of carbon fiber? Especially with EVs needing to be as efficient as possible.<p>The BMW i3 had a carbon fiber frame and was still reasonably priced back in 2013, yet no other normal cars seem to have went this way.
So there are modern efforts to replace LP compressor blades of LM1500's (industrial conversions of J79's) to save weight and improve efficiency. Carbon fiber blades weigh a fraction of what metal ones do. Also, with computational fluid dynamics, new blade designs can be evolved and optimized for a specific power-band. For static applications, the risks of using more delicate materials can be tolerable if the efficiency in ROI exceeds service costs. There's a YT channel in Canada covering this development.
It's always fun to read an article like this, spot the "this is a press release" tone, and then spot which company had it placed in the WSJ. Along with a quote from the CEO. It's basically free advertising.