Fiberforge® ∨

GOAL

Increase market penetration of lightweight materials

CHALLENGE

Create a cost-competitive carbon fiber production method

METHOD

Technology Assessment

OUTCOME

A spin-off company that develops new techniques for manufacturing carbon fiber components

OVERVIEW

Strong, lightweight materials are key to making more fuel-efficient cars, trucks, and airplanes, because fuel use is integrally linked to vehicle weight (see Design Philosophy).

Historically, one of the major barriers to the widespread adoption of strong, lightweight materials has been cost.

To address this barrier, RMI spun off a for-profit venture -- Hypercar®, Inc. in 1999 to develop advanced, lightweight materials for the automotive industry.

In 2004, Hypercar® changed its name to Fiberforge in order to better reflect the company’s direction and focus on lowering the cost of high-volume fiber-reinforced composite structure manufacturing.

These composites are materials that contain fibers for increased structure and strength.

Carbon fiber -- a widely used composite -- comprises long, thin carbon filaments in a resin matrix.

In general, composites have much higher strength-to-weight ratios than their metal counterparts and therefore are useful in applications where weight reduction is a priority.

Composites have been used in the aerospace industry, automotive racing, high-performance sports equipment and, more recently, commercial aircraft such as Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.