Research underway in the Minakuchi Lab – new fiber features to control crack propagation in composite materials

Composite materials are materials that are made by combining one or two materials. Composite materials have been used by humans for thousands of years but as technological developments increase, more and more examples of composite materials have been created which has led to a staggering number of innovations in a wide range of different fields. One major example of this is the aerospace industry which relies on materials that are strong but light. It is essential that an aircraft is strong enough to resist the enormous stresses that are placed on it by its mechanisms and the environment in which it operates, but light enough to be propelled thousands of miles into the sky. Some of the most abundant composite materials used in the aerospace industry are carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) which are the focus of Dr Shu Minakuchi's research team at the Minakuchi Laboratory within the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, The University of Tokyo. Minakuchi's team is working on advanced composite materials represented by CFRPs, with a view to overcoming some of the problems associated with cracks from stresses and their propagation.