Currently reading: Under the skin: what exactly is carbonfibre?

The super-lightweight material can be found in most modern sports cars. But how is it made and what does the future hold?

Carbonfibre is one of those things that gets taken for granted as the super-lightweight material that costs a lot and few people can afford. But what is this stuff? 

The answer to that is pretty much what it sounds like: fibres made of a graphite-like carbon. Those fibres are made from stuff called polyacrylonitrile (or PAN, a plastic), which in turn is made from acrylonitrile. The PAN fibres are heated at around 300deg C to burn off anything that isn’t carbon and then superheated to produce the carbon fibres. 

That takes time and a fair amount of energy, which is why carbonfibre isn’t the most sustainable of materials – that and the fact that it can’t be recycled into high-grade material in the same way as aluminium can. 

Wound onto large bobbins like some kind of elongated 21st-century cotton reel, the fibres are then woven into matting that feels much like smooth, rudimentary sacking but looks black and shiny. The weave can vary for different uses but the main types are called twill and plain weave. 

At that point, how the carbonfibre is used varies. The fibre can already be impregnated with uncured resin and in this form is, not surprisingly, called prepreg. It must be cold-stored and, to use, it’s cut into the appropriate shapes much like a tailor would cut cloth for clothing. Then it’s ‘laid up’ in the mould for the component being made, the direction of weave in each layer decided by the engineers who designed the component. In a car’s main structure, like a Formula 1 or supercar tub, the direction of weave depends on which direction forces are working. 

Next, the mould goes into a silicon-treated bag and the air is sucked out to compress the layers of carbon fibres together. Then the carbonfibre is ready for curing ideally in an autoclave (a pressurised oven) at 120-180deg C and 2-6 bar. That’s the way F1 car tubs are made. Where a megabucks autoclave isn’t available, then a bagged carbonfibre component can be cured in an oven (while maintaining the vacuum) at 60-100deg C. 

A more expensive method but one used for the production of some car components and, in certain cases, complete car monocoques is a heated press. The moulds, or ‘dies’, are made of precision steel and similar to those used for pressing steel or aluminium body panels. Expensive steel tooling such as this is also used for resin transfer moulding (RTM), where the dry carbonfibre is laid up in the mould, which clamps together and is injected with resin at 10-20 bar and then heated. Once part-cured, the job can be fully cured in an oven later. RTM is fast and can be used to mass-produce several thousand parts a year. 

One of the latest developments in carbonfibre is forged composite, where fibres are cut into short lengths of about 5cm, mixed with resin, injected into a mould and pressed (forged). More of that in part two next week, plus a look at who is doing what with carbonfibre and on which cars.

Back to top

BMW’s high-fibre diet

Carbon1 sidey

Looking like Dumbledore’s spare wig, polyacrylonitrile, the stuff used to make carbon fibres, is known as a ‘precursor’ because it’s a stage before the finished material. Used for BMW i production, polyacrylonitrile ‘tows’ consisting of 100,000 fibres each are made at the Moses Lake plant in Washington, the US.

Read more

The story behind the perfect carbonfibre finish​

Most extravagant optional extras you can buy​

Preserving the paint on a Ferrari F40​

Join our WhatsApp community and be the first to read about the latest news and reviews wowing the car world. Our community is the best, easiest and most direct place to tap into the minds of Autocar, and if you join you’ll also be treated to unique WhatsApp content. You can leave at any time after joining - check our full privacy policy here.

Join the debate

Comments
6
Add a comment…
Real_sluggo 3 June 2019

Really??

Does this topic really need to be explained?? AutoCar's purveyor's are true PetrolHeads and have known about carbonfibre since it became the go-to material in F1 about when the Dinosaurs were killed off...  Seriously? 

we're not daft. nor ignorant

Peter Cavellini 3 June 2019

Yes, really...

Real_sluggo wrote:

Does this topic really need to be explained?? AutoCar's purveyor's are true PetrolHeads and have known about carbonfibre since it became the go-to material in F1 about when the Dinosaurs were killed off...  Seriously? 

we're not daft. nor ignorant

So you know everything?, how did you find out things?, well, some of us ask obvious questions because we want to know.

Peter Cavellini 3 June 2019

And why not yet?

 Carbon fibre has been around for decades and yet it is still expensive, you’d have thought by now that the costs of development and production would have come down by now, why?, can’t be the money, car makers just now are pouring billions into Battery development so why didn’t Carbon fibre get taken up in making cars lighter, stronger, safer?

Vertigo 3 June 2019

Peter Cavellini wrote:

Peter Cavellini wrote:

 Carbon fibre has been around for decades and yet it is still expensive, you’d have thought by now that the costs of development and production would have come down by now, why?, can’t be the money, car makers just now are pouring billions into Battery development so why didn’t Carbon fibre get taken up in making cars lighter, stronger, safer?

It *has* gotten faster and cheaper. During the 1990s, carbonfibre construction was only available in tiny-volume hypercars like the XJ220, F1 and EB110. In the early 2000s, it extended to high-end supercars sold in the low thousands, such as the SLR and Carrera GT. In 2011, McLaren brought it to the 12C, which sold for ~£150k at the rate of 1-2k per year.

Today, it's used in the £35k, 30k/year BMW i3. Which is kind of amazing.

typos1 3 June 2019

Peter Cavellini wrote:

Peter Cavellini wrote:

 Carbon fibre has been around for decades and yet it is still expensive, you’d have thought by now that the costs of development and production would have come down by now, why?, can’t be the money, car makers just now are pouring billions into Battery development so why didn’t Carbon fibre get taken up in making cars lighter, stronger, safer?

Yeah, I vealways wondered that, I think the answers in the article - the manufacturing process is quite labour intensive, but the article also mentions the new devlopment of "forging", which this, so we may see more of it in future.

They need to work on a resin that can be melted down or some other way that would enable it to be recycled though.

jason_recliner 3 June 2019

This series of more technical articles is great!

I've learnt something from most of them.  Thanks!