Although carbon fibers may not be the material of the future, the industry is still continuing to flourish. Continuous and chopped ceramic fibers are right at the cusp of some significant expansion. These have so far been trapped in the usual catch-22: manufacturing and cost advancements cannot occur without scaling, but scaling cannot occur without orders.

Slow growth and closed-door early adopter industries they have been operating in will finally start to come out of research and qualification to hit large-scale production volumes.

It is also expected that next generation materials will start progression away from dumb structural parts and towards multifunctional products. Functionality will be incorporated in fiber composites for energy storage, sensor technology, energy harvesting or many more reasons. CFRP has long been used and is very much the industry standard in certain application sectors. However, beyond these core sectors, newer areas including rail transport, civil engineering remediation, spars in wind turbines, prosthetics, UAVs, and pressure vessels are all looking at this as their needs and the material maturity start to align.

Alternatively, if properties or price are not currently to the end user’s standards, then hybrid parts are becoming increasingly viable options. There are numerous ways that dissimilar materials or fibers can be combined to optimise the product with an ever-increasing number of success stories.