Why carbon fibre engines haven’t broken into F1
It has yet to happen but, as PAT SYMONDS explains, the idea carbon fibre or composites being used in Formula 1 engines goes back over 40 years
The first documented use of carbon fibre in motorsport was when some filaments gathered together as a light tow or string were used to reinforce the bodywork of the Ford GT40s that raced at Le Mans. The strands were laminated onto the glass fibre bodywork in a large criss-cross pattern which was very sparse since the cost of the fibres was $1,000 per kilogram. That equates to nearly $9,000 per kilogram in today’s money.
At the time it was an exotic material and, while it promised much, the costs kept usage limited. Today a general-purpose fibre such as T800 is under $30 a kilogram, cheap fibres half that and high-performance materials such as T1100 only around $100 a kilogram. Properties have improved no end with those early fibres having a tensile strength of around 2.5 Gigapascals (GPa) while the soon-to-be-available T1200 will reach 8GPa.
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