Carbon fiber is a material widely used in industry, from aeronautics to motorsports to wind turbine blades or bicycle frames. But there are fibers and fibers: While the industry standard is the T300 and T700, there are high-performance ones like the T800 or T1000. If we talk about the best and the most advanced, the high-performance aerospace grade T1100 comes into the picture. Of course, it was only manufactured in two countries: Japan or the United States. China is about to change that.
An industry located in two countries. More specifically, in the T1100 producing industry, the Japanese Toray Industries It is the absolute reference (they invented that nomenclature). Then there is Hexcel in the United States, with its counterpart the HexTow IM10. In the United States there is also a Toray plant in Alabama, which the Japanese company advertisement back in 2022 with one goal: to meet the demand of the US defense sector. That’s if we talk about industrial scale, because in the laboratory Russia, South Korea wave India They are making their first steps. And of course, China.
China makes a virtue of necessity. The Asian giant has achieved a milestone: going from the laboratory to the production plant with a 95% success rate in the city of Langfang, according to CGTN. They explain that, to ensure stable production, Shenzhen University worked hand in hand with the Changsheng Technology company since 2023.
Why is it important. To begin with, because you can produce small laboratory samples, but the difficult thing is to scale to industrial volumes. This is what happens with a good part of the promising materials. But by combining state capital, university laboratory and factory research side by side, China has achieved a brutal synergy in the development of new materials: CGTN mentions expressly advances every 3 or 4 months and more than 30 rounds of iteration examining hundreds of factors to eliminate defects and reach mass production.
The fact in itself is a milestone, but what is truly important is the consequence: technological independence. Once launched, China’s aerospace and defense programs will no longer be limited by the supply of this carbon fiber from abroad.
T1100 carbon fiber is strategic. It is the material strongest structural (in strength-to-weight ratio) and lightest that humans can produce on a scale: it has a tensile strength of 7,000 MPa and a thickness of just five micrometers. It is seven times stronger than steel while weighing only a quarter as much, it synthesizes a scientist from Shenzhen University for CGTN. And it is essential for the manufacture of fighter aircraft, satellites, rockets and civil aircraft.
It is, therefore, a strategic and sensitive material due to its dual civil and military use. For this reason, Japan and the United States have strict export controls. That is, if you want T1100 grade carbon fiber to cover your fighters, for example, you have to check out if everything goes well, because obviously such a strategic material is subject to geopolitical diplomacy. This point is important because How about GPUs?the United States may block its sale to China. And in fact, does it. Also Japan, via Wassenaar Agreement.
In perspective. Toray launched the T300 in 1971quickly making this carbon fiber the industry standard. Forty-three years later, the Japanese company announced the T1100 in 2014. China, on the other hand, had to wait until 2008 to have his own T300, but he has stepped on the accelerator and in just 18 years he has caught up.
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Cover | CGTN
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