What carbon fiber material brings to the Automobile Industry.

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Without any doubt land is the most used mode of transportation and the heart of land transportation is private owned cars which is the used automobile we rely on to move from one place to another. The first vehicle powered by gas engine was the three wheeled Benz Patent Motor car on January 29, 1886 in it was invented by Carl Benz. In the early 20th century the first car accessible for mass producing car was achieve by the Ford Motor Company due to Harry ford brilliant design of the 1908 Model T.

A Patent-Motorwagen picture
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Material use in car manufacturing before carbon fiber.

After we were able mass produce our car, the car manufacturing industry became a booming industry due to high demand of cars. The best available material than to produce a car body was steel but even through steel were strong they have some disadvantages such as it weight and it ability to be corrode. On average, about 900 kilogram of steel is use for just the body built. That is a lot of weight when you considering the weight of the engine to. This excessive weight drastically reduce the speed of early cars and with the addition of heavy less powered engine, the first car was nothing near to what we drive today.

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In the early 21 century research discovered a much lighter and stronger metals when compere to steel which were able to be use a car body and those materials are Aluminum and Magnesium. With these two materials our cars got stronger and lighter, we were able to achieve some new top speed record for cars. With continual research on how to find a better material to build our car, we discovered Carbon Fiber.

The discovery of carbon fiber

Carbon fiber is not a newly discovered material in fact Thomas Edison reportedly use cellulose based carbon fiber in this light bulbs research. Carbon fiber was discovered by Sir Joseph Wilson Swan in 1860 for this own light bulb research. Carbon fiber is an excellent strength to weight and also stiffness to weight material through research done on the material. With these combination of properties, it is consider as the best material to be used for car body build. The first car production car that was built with carbon fiber was the Jaguar XJR-15 in 1990.

A Jaguar Sport XJR-15 picture
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Carbon fiber has many advantages over other car manufacturing materials such as high modulus, tensile strength and can be molded into almost any shape as car part. We see the first fully adoption of carbon fiber in racing cars such as Formula one (F1) and with development these racing company makes in carbon fiber has help car manufacture around the world to fully utilize this material to its full potential.

Synthesis of carbon fiber from polyacrylonitrile (PAN)
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A component made from standard carbon fiber of the same thickness as an aluminium one will offer 31% more rigidity than the aluminium one and at the same time weight 42% less and have 60% more strength. Source

The Hexcel company are the leading manufacture of carbon fiber with over 50 years of experience and we see all big cars manufacturing companies such as Mercedes Bens, Ferrari, BMW, Chevrolet Corvette and Alfa Romeo has a section delegate in developing carbon fiber materials because it the future materials for car production maybe in the future we may see a car engine made entirely from carbon fiber because of it good thermal resistivity.

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The future with carbon fiber material

Carbon fiber is the lightest, strongest material currently in the market and we have been able to utilize this material it some of its full potential not only in the car manufacturing industries but all in other areas like production of sporting equipment, all racing vehicle such as motorcycle, bicycle, speed boat and lot more. Virtually any material that requires lightweight and high strength, the best option is carbon fiber. I am sure with our advancement in technology we will find other aspect we can apply this material to solve many problem.

A carbon fiber bicycle
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CONCLUSION

Carbon fiber is here to change the way we design our cars and we have been able to achieve so much within few years of this automobile discovery. The major drawback for me is it very expensive when compere to other material such as lightweight aluminum where can also be used in car body manufacturing.

Thank you all for reading stay safe and see you in my next post.

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