LECTURE NOTES ON MANUFACTURING AND PROCESSING OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS

كتاب "LECTURE NOTES ON MANUFACTURING AND PROCESSING OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS" ، تأليف : اسامة محمد المرضي سليمان ، نقرأ من الكتاب :

There are more than 50,000 materials available to engineers for the design and manufacturing of products for various applications. These materials range from ordinary materials (e.g., copper, cast iron, brass), which have been available for several hundred years, to the more recently developed, advanced materials (e.g., composites, ceramics, and high performance steels). Due to the wide choice of materials, today’s engineers are posed with a big challenge for the right selection of a material and the right selection of a manufacturing process for an application. It is difficult to study all of these materials individually; therefore, a broad classification is

necessary for simplification and characterization.

These materials, depending on their major characteristics (e.g., stiffness, strength, density, and melting temperature), can be broadly divided into four main categories

• Metals,

• Plastics,

• Ceramics, and

• Composites.

We tend to think of the latter half of the twentieth century as the “composite age”. In some ways this is realistic and gives us a feeling of continuity from former “material based ages” such as the stone, bronze and iron ages. Certainly the last 50 years have been associated with some remarkable developments in composite materials.

Composite materials have been utilized to solve technological problems for a long time but only in the 1960s did these materials start capturing the attention of industries with the introduction of polymeric-based composites. Since then, composite materials have become common engineering materials and are designed and manufactured for various applications including automotive components, sporting goods, aerospace parts, consumer goods, and in the marine and oil industries. The growth in composite usage also came about because of increased awareness regarding product performance and increased competition in the global market for lightweight components.

Among all materials, composite materials have the potential to replace widely used steel and aluminum, and many times with better performance. Replacing steel components with composite components can save 60 to 80% in component weight, and 20 to 50% weight by replacing aluminum parts.