Composite Structures
All About Fiber-Reinforced Plastics! The book is in Finnish. Get the Entire Book Online for Free!
Polymer composites are increasingly used across nearly all industrial sectors, including transportation, sports equipment, mechanical engineering, and construction. Compared to traditional materials, they offer several key advantages such as light weight, excellent mechanical properties, moldability, and chemical resistance. For example, in the world’s largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380, polymer composites already account for over 20% of the structural weight.
"Composite Structures" presents a versatile overview of the use of modern polymer composites in structural applications. The book describes the most common raw materials and their properties, product manufacturing techniques, product characteristics and their testing methods, design principles, production technology, and the most common applications. The text is complemented by a glossary of key industry terms compiled at the end of the book. The book is suitable as a textbook for technical institutions as well as for companies in the industry.
The chapters and contents of the book are briefly presented below, and you can easily access the chapter you wish to view.
The full book is available here (note only in Finnish):
01 Introduction
Polymer composites: development, properties, applications, and manufacturing techniques.
02 Terminology and Notations
An introduction to the key terms and notations used in composite structures.
03 Raw Materials
Key raw materials with a focus on the manufacturer's perspective and the properties of the final product.
04 Semi-Finished Products
Fibers used as reinforcements in composites. Fibers different forms, hybrid and combination reinforcements and polymer-based semi-finished products — their properties, manufacturing methods, and applications..
05 Manufacturing Techniques
The main basic and combined manufacturing methods of polymer composite parts, as well as reaction injection molding (RIM) technology..
06 Properties
Due to the large number of parameters involved, the properties of composites are examined at a general level. The main focus is on fibre-reinforced laminates, which represent the most significant group of polymer composites used in load-bearing structures.
07 Experimental Determination of Properties
Key testing methods used to determine the properties of composites, including both destructive and non-destructive testing techniques for raw materials and structures.
08 Computational Determination of Properties
Computational models developed for evaluating the properties of polymer composites, as well as analysis models for laminates composed of fibre-reinforced layers.
09 Structural Design
The design of composite structures differs in many ways from that of traditional metal structures. This chapter focuses on describing these distinctive features.
11 Applications
Composite structures are used in nearly all fields of engineering. This section provides an overview of the reasons for their use, the materials and manufacturing methods typical for each application area, as well as the applications themselves.