What The Tech?! Carbon Fibre

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2 Oct 2025

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If you’re into sports, cars or aerospace, you won’t have to look too hard to find the usage of carbon fibre. While some inventions take time to develop and come to life, Carbon fibre was not one of those inventions. With its lightweight, high tensile strength and durability, Carbon Fibre and Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics would take the world by storm. Like many world-changing inventions, though, its history and evolution would be a pretty interesting tale.

While the most rapid development would come in the aftermath of World War 2, the reality is that experimenters, scientists, and researchers had already been experimenting for years by this point. In fact, some of the first research would be carried out nearly three decades prior, before the turn of the new century.

Early History

Science often has a heavy overlap with other cutting-edge technologies, and for carbon fibre, it would be electricity and the light globe that would help lay the foundations for carbon fibre research. It would be circa 1879, when Thomas Edison would experiment with artificial filaments to help extend the life of his light bulbs that were under development. Using a mixture of Bamboo and Cotton, Edison would use a variety of different materials to extend the life of his new invention.

While the results would be inconclusive due to the filaments lacking the required strength, Edison would ultimately achieve mixed results, however, it would be this research that would lay the foundation for modern materials research.

Like many technologies that we’ve looked at in this series, it would take time for the research and manufacturing side of things to catch up to the theoretical concept. However, with World War 2 just a few decades away and the birth of aviation imminent, it wouldn’t take long to move from small steps to larger strides.

Carbon fibre would be used heavily in F1 platforms. Source: Wikipedia.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Part of the reason the research around exotic materials came from the fact that successfully manufacturing said materials offered huge benefits to multiple key industries. Aviation could use carbon fibre to reduce weight without sacrificing strength, giving instant improvements to fuel economy. While in the world of motorsport, carbon fibre offered the same improvements to racing vehicles that would eventually filter down into road-legal production cars.

Early research would focus on using Rayon as part of the production process. Developed in the 1950s, Rayon would be carbonised, making it stronger and more durable than the organic material. While the material did provide adequate strength, the production process was labourious and inefficient. This would ultimately mean that Rayon would be unsuitable, leaving researchers to continue their journey looking for suitable alternatives.

Later, in 1963, the Royal Aircraft Establishment would settle on polyacrylonitrile (PAN). PAN would become a strong contender as a precursor, providing similar strength to Rayon with a simplified manufacturing process.

Ultimately, it would be the 1970s before industry would get behind a strong contender, and when the time would come, it would be as simple as it would be efficient. Mixing carbon with resin would give carbon-fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP), a compound which would eventually become the backbone of composite materials.

The Mclaren F1 would be the first vehicle with a full carbon fibre body. Source: Wikipedia

This timing would be perfect to leverage several other technological shifts as well, and as the computer boom took hold during the 80s, carbon fibre would slowly become more commonly seen. This would typically be in the form of smaller, easier-to-manufacture components, but as technology progressed, we’d eventually see carbon fibre replacing steel entirely.
McLaren’s F1 sports car would be the first vehicle with a full, carbon-fibre body.

Oceangate’s Titan prototype would enter the history books for all the wrong reasons: Source: Wikipedia

The Infamous Titan

It’s hard to discuss modern materials and carbon fibre without eventually having the Oceangate Titan drama raising its head. And with good reason too, as Titan would help highlight the importance of modern materials in engineering. It would do this while highlighting some of the weaknesses we tend to come across when using these materials in harsh environments.

Causing a media frenzy at the time, Titan would be controversial due to its extensive usage of aviation-grade carbon fibre materials in the hull. Aiming to “break rules and get things moving”, the only thing that would eventually break would be the ship itself.

Most submarines would use titanium or steel pressure hulls, which would provide a known set of limits that would behave predictably under pressure. Titan aimed to reset the norm by using carbon fibre, as it was theorised to provide similar strength without the added weight penalty. Its extensive use in aviation by this point appeared to validate that theory.

This theory came with one distinct problem, which would be the difference in the way carbon fibre would act under pressure. It would be pretty good at dealing with tension (pulling forces), but would be far weaker in dealing with compression (pushing forces). With the Titanic lying in more than 3800 meters of water, compression on the hull would be thousands of PSI in an environment where carbon fibre would be at its weakest.

Eventually, Titan would help to highlight something materials engineers the world over had already learnt. Exotic materials are useless if you are playing to their weaknesses instead of their strengths.

Evolution is an ever-changing beast, but often, it’s worth considering the lessons that we already understand. Especially when dealing with harsh, unforgiving environments.

Carbon Fibre would help aviation achieve better material performance without compromising structural integrity. Source: Wikipedia.

The Future

Many What The Tech articles highlight that while something can be technically relevant, while still facing its own flaws, and in this instance, carbon fibre is no different. It’s revolutionised industry and induced mass change however, for it to continue to thrive, it’s important that it overcomes some of the issues that restrict even broader adoption.

In Boeing’s 787 airliner, composite materials would end up being a large portion of the overall structure. For this trend to continue though, more efficient ways of manufacturing carbon fibre are needed. This approach is two-fold, as it focuses on both power requirements and overall emissions.

The end of the lifecycle process requires improvement too, as to date, carbon fibre products have proven to be particularly difficult to recycle. While this is slowly improving with time, effective strategies to help process end-of-life waste are an important part of achieving broader adoption.

It’s reasonable to assume that in the future, research around these topics will continue to be extensive. We should also see new research into other hybrid materials, too, meaning that eventually, Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic might end up being knocked off its throne.

If these problems are able to be solved at scale, there is every chance that in the coming decades, carbon fibre will be as common as aluminium was in the past.

What The Tech is our recurring, twice-monthly piece that looks at the technology that was essential in shaping our modern world.

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