REINFORCING FIBRES AND MATRIX MATERIALS FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPOSITE MATERIALS.

Aramid and carbon fibres are being produced in new types with continually improving performance, resulting in increasing demands on the properties of the matrix materials. Compared with the thermosetting plastics which have been mainly used in the past, thermoplastics offer a number of advantages, both in case of processing and in the properties of finished components. In future they will undoubtedly come to have an increasingly important role in high performance composite materials.