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At The Dow Chemical Company, innovation doesn't just mean developing new products and technologies - it also means using innovative thinking to explore new markets and applications for our proven solutions.
Right now, there's a growing trend in several industries that Dow is stepping up and supporting - the use of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP). In fact, markets for CFRP applications, such as aerospace, wind energy, transportation and leisure, are growing at a rate of more than 10 percent each year.
The key drivers for using CFRP are light weight (50 percent lighter than steel and 30 percent lighter than aluminum), low coefficient of thermal expansion (close to zero in the fiber direction) which minimizes residual stresses and high specific strength and stiffness compared to glass fiber composites, steel and aluminum. They key issue has always been economics and while still being relatively expensive, the cost of CFRP is declining.
Dow's role in this boom is to provide technology that supports CFRP. In CFRP, carbon fibers are fixed in place with the use of a polymer matrix, and epoxy resins from Dow are a common choice for these matrices. Currently there is a renewed commitment for composites in the epoxies business and efforts have recently gotten underway in Freeport to strengthen both the components as well as systems participation strategies in the market segment. Dow epoxies has also developed a major play in the wind energy market with the launch of its AIRSTONE brand of formulated resins to facilitate fabrication of fiber reinforced composite blades.
Dow is also currently evaluating its role in the carbon fiber space in order to truly become a complete system provider to this industry and is examining various options to lower cost of carbon fibers. Currently over half the cost is the precursor followed by the carbonization conversion step. Attempts to move away from specialty acrylonitrile have been considered externally and candidates such as textile grade polyacrylonitrile (PAN), polyolefins and lignin are some of the front runners.
Countless Applications for CFRP
While the aerospace industry has been the technology-driver for CFRP, several other industries ranging from wind energy to shipbuilding, consumer electronics, oil platform components and more have embraced its use.
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Aircraft: CFRP creates lighter-weight aircrafts like the Airbus A380, Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 XWB - while also requiring less maintenance because of its superior fatigue resistance.
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Automotive: CFRP improves high-performance racecars because of its strength-to-weight ratio. Some car makers are also exploring the use of CFRP in parts for everyday cars.
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Wind Energy: Strategic deployment of CFRP facilitates lowering weight and increasing stiffness of the fiberglass blade thereby enabling the achievement of larger blades which in turn produce more energy.
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Pressurized Containers: CFRP is also used to make filament wound pressure containers to hold CNG, LNG and hydrogen and enables the achievement of higher burst pressure and rupture strength while maintaining light weight.
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Civil Engineering: CFRP is a cost-effective alternative for retrofitting and strengthening existing structures such as bridges.
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Sports & Leisure: CFRP is a lightweight alternative to steel and aluminum that is being used in sporting equipment such as racing bicycles, tennis rackets and fishing rods.
Dow Europe's Contributions to CFRP
Since 2007, Dow has participated in the CFK Valley Network - a private university and a conglomerate of more than 85 companies and institutes located near the Airbus production facilities in Stade, Germany (CFK is German for CFRP). Airbus Operations in Stade produces vertical tail planes for all Airbus aircrafts, pressure bulk heads and flaps for some and additionally for A350 XWB two fuselage shells and wing covers, for military aircraft A400M wing covers and for the Eurofighter fuselage shells. Airbus in Stade is one of Europe's largest and most experienced practical user of CFRP.
Dow's participates locally in the CFK Valley Network to identify potential business opportunities in cooperation with Epoxy R&D and colleagues from Dow Automotive globally. Dow's expertise as Europe's largest producer of epoxy resins and the Company's automotive expertise are highly regarded.
"The use of carbon fiber-based composites for structural parts in the transportation industry, both car and commercial transportation alike, is expected to grow significantly in the near future," said Dagmar Van Heur, New Business Development for Dow. "This is enabled by European legislation around CO² emissions and fuel efficiency, which manufacturers can achieve by decreasing the weight of the vehicles and increasing customer preference for more ecological vehicles."
