View Official ISO9001 Certification
Cart(0)   Checkout Checkout   My Account My Account
DragonPlate Carbon Fiber Composites
8:30am - 5:30pm ET

8:30am - 5:00pm ET

Leave a Message

(Most Stocked Items)

$5k - $10k / 5%
$10k - $25k / 7.5%
$25k+ / 10%

Call for More Details.



What is Carbon Fiber?


Plain Carbon Fiber Weave
Carbon Fiber Twill Weave


Carbon fibers reinforcing a stable matrix of epoxy

Strength, Stiffness, and Comparisons With Other Materials



Pros and Cons


Although carbon fiber has many significant benefits over other materials, there are also tradeoffs one must weigh against. First, solid carbon fiber will not yield. Under load carbon fiber bends but will not remain permanently deformed. Instead, once the ultimate strength of the material is exceeded, carbon fiber will fail suddenly and catastrophically. In the design process it is critical that the engineer understand and account for this behavior, particularly in terms of design safety factors. Carbon fiber composites are also significantly more expensive than traditional materials. Working with carbon fiber requires a high skill level and many intricate processes to produce high quality building materials (for example, solid carbon sheets, sandwich laminates, tubes, etc). Very high skill level and specialized tooling and machinery are required to create custom-fabricated, highly optimized parts and assemblies.

Carbon Fiber vs. Metals


The properties of a carbon fiber part are close to that of steel and the weight is close to that of plastic. Thus the strength to weight ratio (as well as stiffness to weight ratio) of a carbon fiber part is much higher than either steel or plastic. The specific details depend on the matter of construction of the part and the application. For instance, a foam-core sandwich has extremely high strength to weight ratio in bending, but not necessarily in compression or crush. In addition, the loading and boundary conditions for any components are unique to the structure within which they reside. Thus it is impossible for us to provide the thickness of carbon fiber plate that would replace the steel plate in your application. It is the customer's responsibility to determine the safety and suitability of any Dragonplate product for a specific purpose. This is accomplished through engineering analysis and experimental validation.



PRODUCTS Stiffness to Weight Toughness Crushability Moisture Resistance Sound Absorbency
Polypropylene Honeycomb Core BEST GOOD GOOD BEST BEST


DragonPlate Glossary

3-Point Bending: A condition where both ends of a beam are supported and a load is applied at the mid-span.

Aramid Fiber: A synthetic fiber with exceptional strength and toughness commonly used in applications where high resistance to impacts.

Axial Stress: Stress component along the longitudinal axis of a component.

Brittle Material: A material that does not yield, but instead fails suddenly when the ultimate stress is exceeded.

Carbon Fiber: A high strength, high stiffness material that when combined with a resin matrix creates a composite with exceptional mechanical properties.

CFRP: Abbreviated form of carbon-fiber reinforced plastic

Cantilever: A condition where one end of a beam is fixed and a load is applied to the opposite free end.

Composite Sandwich Core: In a composite sandwich structure, the core is a lower density material placed close to the neutral axis in order to increase the stiffness to weight ratio.

Composite material: A material created by combining two or more materials such that the final construction exploits certain properties from each. In the construction of carbon-fiber reinforced plastics, the high strength, high stiffness of the carbon fibers are combined with a low density stable matrix to create a combined material with desirable material properties.

Density: The weight of a material per unit length, area, or volume (linear density, areal density and volumetric density, respectively).

Epoxy: A polymer resin that hardens when combined with a catalyst. Epoxy is one of the most common materials used to form the matrix in carbon-fiber fabrication.

Fiberglass: A glass fiber reinforced plastic similar to carbon-fiber, but with much lower strength and stiffness, but also much lower cost.

Homogeneous: Defined as having a uniform composition throughout the material.

Isotropic: Defined as having the same properties (mechanical, electrical, thermal, etc) in all directions. Carbon-Fiber laminates are typically highly directional, having high stiffness and strength only along the longitudinal directions of the fibers.

Matrix: In a composite material the matrix comprises the stable "fill" which holds the fiber reinforcement. By itself the matrix is typically much weaker than the fibers, particularly in tension. The matrix's primary function is to transfer the loads between the fibers within the composite material.

Modulus of Elasticity: A measure of the stiffness of a material, defined as the axial stress divided by the axial strain. The higher the modulus, the stiffer the material (i.e. the greater the stress necessary to cause deformation). Also known as Young's Modulus.

Poisson's Ratio: When a material is stretched due to an applied load, it elongates in the axial direction and contracts in the perpendicular, or transverse, direction. The poisson's ratio is defined as the axial strain divided by the transverse strain.

Quasi-Isotropic: In a composite material, the placement of individual laminates, or plies, so that the fibers are directed along multiple directions. The result is a material with approximate isotropy in mechanical properties.

Polyacrylonitrile (PAN): A raw material commonly used to make carbon-fiber.

Pultrusion: A process which creates an extremely stiff rod, tube, or other cross-section whereby all of the carbon fibers are aligned along the longitudinal axis.

Reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC): Carbon-reinforced graphite composite used in high temperature applications.

Shear Modulus: Defined as the shear stress divided by the shear strain. Also known as the Modulus of Rigidity.

Shear Stress: The component of stress parallel to the cross-sectional face of a material.

Shear Strain: Deformation of a material caused by a shear stress. A shear strain causes skewing of a material element.

Strain: The deformation of a material caused by an applied load. The strain is defined as the change in length divided by the original length of a material.

Stress: Defined as the force per unit area. The stresses within a composite are a function of the material properties of the materials, the geometry, and the loading condition.

Ultimate Tensile Strength: The maximum stress a material can withstand in tension, above which failure will occur.

Veneer: A thin, highly flexible sheet of carbon-fiber.

Yield Strength: The stress above which a material with remain permanently deformed even when the applied load is removed.

© DragonPlate™ 2016 - A Division of Allred & Associates Inc.