If you were to make something from each of these.which is more expensive? aluminum or carbon fiber ?which is stronger?What would the advantages or disadvantages of each be?
Oxidation: carbon fibre oxidise and looses strength as it oxidise. The oxidation level is quite low at room temperature but increases with temperature and also chemical contaminant Durability. as seen above CF will not have durability in time as you have with Aluminium. So be mindful as your product will not be as good in 10 years with CF as it is in Aluminium. Also failure mode with CF is much more difficult to predict, analyse and failure are not a controlled as Aluminium. CF will shatter when crack initiate from a minimal defect or chip.
This Site Might Help You. RE: aluminum vs carbon fiber ? If you were to make something from each of these. which is more expensive? aluminum or carbon fiber ? which is stronger? What would the advantages or disadvantages of each be?
CF is always more expensive - mostly because of production costs. Aluminum can be bent, machined, and extruded - all relatively cheap processes. CF has to be molded and typically requires a long cure time - so, slow and expensive. CF has higher strength to weight ratio - so if you're building an airplane or other thing where weight is critical... But, the strength thing is really complicated - how far does either deflect under a given load? And is deflection a good thing as in, say, a carbon fiber fly rod. At the deflection limit what happens? Aluminum takes a permanent bend, carbon fiber shatters. An aluminum car fender given a small bump will dent - a carbon fiber one will bounce back without a scratch. Given a larger bump the aluminum will dent more and the carbon fiber one will shatter. And while we're talking about bending - aluminum will 'cold work' - that is if you bend it back and forth and back and forth a zillion times first it becomes harder, then more brittle, then it breaks. Carbon fiber designs can be made to flex repetitively for much longer. Then there's heat issues. Aluminum can take a lot of heat. CF is actually 'composite construction' where some plastic (polyester resin, epoxy resin, etc) is required to bind the fibers together. All of these resins have different chractersitics when heated, but most of them have a Tg (temp at which they start to deform) of maybe 250 F or, for some hgih end epoxy resins, maybe 400 F - epoxy that can handle higher heat than that gets both expensive and difficult/dangerous to work with. So, carbon fiber leadin edges on the wing of an airplane that is designed to go supersonic might not be such a good idea. There's definitely no simple answer to this question.
