52. COMPOSITE MANUFACTURING

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Each material has desirable properties, but in most situations the perfect material is never found.

Composites allow mixing of materials to get the best of both.

BASIC PRINCIPLE: different types of materials are blended together. The materials are often quite different in terms of properties, and the results are a new material that has many of the desired properties of each material.

Examples

- clay bricks with embedded straw

- reinforced concrete

- samurai swords with steel/iron alternation of layers

- steel belted radials

- graphite tennis racquets

- fishing poles

for reinforced plastic composites, 2,500,000,000 pounds of plastic based composites were shipped in a wide variety of products in the mid 80's