Carbon fiber reinforced plastics, or CFRPs, are found throughout the aerospace and automotive industries, as well as in high-performance sporting goods, due to their light-weight, high-strength properties.
“Compared to traditional rigid plastics, they have a really heavily increased strength to weight ratio,” explains Matt Riley, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. “Compared to metals, they’re not typically orders of magnitude stronger, but it’s that strength-to-weight ratio that gives you the big benefit.”