The process of manufacturing fiberglass is called pultrusion. If a bulk piece of glass were defect-free, it would be equally as strong as glass fibers however, it is generally impractical to produce and maintain bulk material in a defect-free state outside of laboratory conditions.
#S AND S GLASS FREE#
Unlike glass fibers used for insulation, for the final structure to be strong, the fiber's surfaces must be almost entirely free of defects, as this permits the fibers to reach gigapascal tensile strengths. Glass reinforcements used for fiberglass are supplied in different physical forms: microspheres, chopped or woven glass cloth. The first car to have a fiber-glass body was a 1946 prototype of the Stout Scarab, but the model did not enter production. In 1939 Russia was reported to have constructed a passenger boat of plastic materials, and the United States a fuselage and wings of an aircraft. Ray Greene of Owens Corning is credited with producing the first composite boat in 1937 but did not proceed further at the time due to the brittle nature of the plastic used. Many glass fiber composites continued to be called "fiberglass" (as a generic name) and the name was also used for the low-density glass wool product containing gas instead of plastic. This reduced the insulation properties to values typical of the plastic, but now for the first time, the composite showed great strength and promise as a structural and building material. With the combination of fiberglass and resin the gas content of the material was replaced by plastic. Peroxide curing systems were used by then. The first ancestor of modern polyester resins is Cyanamid's resin of 1942. Originally, Fiberglas was a glass wool with fibers entrapping a great deal of gas, making it useful as an insulator, especially at high temperatures.Ī suitable resin for combining the fiberglass with a plastic to produce a composite material was developed in 1936 by du Pont. Owens joined with the Corning company in 1935 and the method was adapted by Owens Corning to produce its patented "Fiberglas" (spelled with one "s") in 1936. A patent for this method of producing glass wool was first applied for in 1933. Mass production of glass strands was accidentally discovered in 1932 when Games Slayter, a researcher at Owens-Illinois, directed a jet of compressed air at a stream of molten glass and produced fibers. Glass fibers have been produced for centuries, but the earliest patent was awarded to the Prussian inventor Hermann Hammesfahr (1845–1914) in the U.S. 4.3 Oil and gas artificial lift systems.3.2 Table of some common fiberglass types.This article will adopt the convention that "fiberglass" refers to the complete fiber-reinforced composite material, rather than only to the glass fiber within it.Ĭarbon-fiber-reinforced polymer is a similar composite material in which the reinforcement fiber is carbon fibers. Because glass fiber itself is sometimes referred to as "fiberglass", the composite is also called fiberglass-reinforced plastic ( FRP). Other common names for fiberglass are glass-reinforced plastic ( GRP), glass-fiber reinforced plastic ( GFRP) or GFK (from German: Glasfaserverstärkter Kunststoff). Applications include aircraft, boats, automobiles, bath tubs and enclosures, swimming pools, hot tubs, septic tanks, water tanks, roofing, pipes, cladding, orthopedic casts, surfboards, and external door skins. The plastic matrix may be a thermoset polymer matrix-most often based on thermosetting polymers such as epoxy, polyester resin, or vinyl ester resin-or a thermoplastic.Ĭheaper and more flexible than carbon fiber, it is stronger than many metals by weight, is non- magnetic, non- conductive, transparent to electromagnetic radiation, can be molded into complex shapes, and is chemically inert under many circumstances. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet (called a chopped strand mat), or woven into glass cloth. For the glass fiber itself, also sometimes called fiberglass, see glass fiber.įiberglass ( American English), or fibreglass ( Commonwealth English), is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. For the thermal insulation material sometimes called fiberglass, see glass wool. This article is about the type of composite material.
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