Carbon Fiber Composite

Carbon fiber composite is a material made of thin strands of carbon woven or aligned and bound in a resin matrix, offering an exceptionally high strength-to-weight ratio, considerably greater than steel or fiberglass composite, at correspondingly higher cost. Developed for aerospace applications from the 1960s onward, its architectural use has been comparatively limited given its expense, but it has been adopted for structural reinforcement of existing masonry and concrete, for lightweight long-span roof and bridge elements, and for prestige facade and structural accents where minimal weight or slenderness is the design priority. Retrofitting is now the material dominant civil engineering use, wrapped onto existing beams, columns and walls to raise their load capacity; the fiber itself carries an ultimate tensile strength of roughly 3 gigapascals, more than ten times that of mild steel, and applied to a reinforced concrete beam in flexure it commonly doubles or more the section strength. Such seismic retrofit is the material leading use in earthquake-prone regions, favored for being markedly cheaper than replacing the structure outright.