Toray Corporation of Japan announced that it has successfully developed carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) prepregs for aerospace applications. With the help of materials informatics technology, new materials can exhibit extremely high flame retardancy and excellent mechanical properties.
Although mechanical properties are superior to metal materials, traditional CFRP materials have certain inherent defects including flame retardancy and electrical conductivity. The work of improving materials usually requires a lot of experimentation, and it also severely affects the delivery cycle. As part of Toray's digital transformation plan, engineers use materials informatics technology to improve the design based on the required material characteristics through reverse analysis and realize the rapid development of new materials. Through cooperation with Tohoku University in Japan, Toray`s engineers use self-organizing map as an analysis tool to identify reasonable material combinations to achieve the required material properties. Toray said that the new material has compressive strength, heat resistance and other mechanical properties comparable to those commonly used in aerospace. At the same time, the heat release rate of the new material is reduced by 35% compared with the commonly used materials, showing excellent flame retardancy.
Toray plans to apply reverse analysis methods to the thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity and other properties of new materials to develop higher-performance CFRP materials to meet the diverse needs of aerospace, automotive and general industrial applications, and expand the application scenarios of CFRP materials. .
Toray`s above-mentioned research work was funded by "Material Integration" in "Structural Materials Revolutionary Design System" under the "Interdepartmental Strategic Innovation Promotion Program" (SIP).