Glass Fiber’s Markets and Applications

The markets that use glass fibers are very diverse. The following is a brief overview of a few of the primary markets and some selected applications where various glass fiber products can be found. 

Hard Armor. Hard armor is used to protect against dangerous threats such as large caliber projectiles and explosives. Hard armor further branches into light armor for vehicular protection and heavy armor found on tanks. Glass fiber-reinforced resin composites, especially those using S-glass fiber, are particularly important in the light armor arena. S-glass fiber offers a very favorable weight-cost-performance relationship. It is very light and its excellent compressive strength aids in load support, thus allowing armor that can be structural and not just dead weight. Low flammability and smoke-generating behavior is also important in combat situations.

Aerospace. Glass fibers have numerous specific applications in aerospace such as sound and thermal insulation layers for interior aircraft surfaces, rotor blades for rotary winged and propellers for fixed wing aircraft. Glass fiber cotton has innumerable tiny air pockets and low thermal conductivity. When the sound wave enters the glass fiber cotton, its energy will be absorbed by the cotton due to the friction between fibers and different sizes of air pockets. Aircraft blades and propellers are extremely high-stress applications because of the rotational speeds at work and the applied loads. In uses such as these, Performance, strength and weight are the primary drivers for meeting the design specification.

Wind Energy. Glass fibers reinforced composites are commonly used for wind turbines. The fatigue resistance of these composites is crucial for the maintenance and reliability of turbine. That gives the opportunity for designer to create new, ultra-high strength, high-modulus glass compositions for these applications, including environmentally friendly and boron-free glasses. 

Building. Vacuum insulation panels are regarded as one of the most promising high performance thermal insulation materials for green building. They have extremely low thermal conductivity and can guarantee the building object be the energy-saving type. The common core materials of vacuum insulation panels are several types of glass fibers. Glass fibers enable vacuum insulation panels to own a lot of advantages, such as low thermal conductivity, low effective weight and non-combustible. Glass fibers can also be mixed with strengthen cement, gypsum or polymer products for building application.

Automobile. With the development of society, people put more and more strict demand on automobile safety and fuel efficiency, which leads to the improvement of automobile crashworthiness and light weighting level. Glass fiber-reinforced composites have the trait of corrosion resistance, noise attenuation, impact cushion, good mechanical property and short shaping cycling. Many injection-molded plastic parts used on the body and engine compartment are made from glass fiber-reinforced composites. Many rubber components such as belts and tires are also reinforced with glass fibers. Glass fiber-reinforced composites replace the structure and shell body of the metal and pure plastic materials. They effectively reduce the needed driving force and extend the life. 

Printed Circuit Board. Printed circuit board is the foundation upon which the architecture of today’s high-speed electrical circuitry is built. It provides a means for the fixed structural placement of the large variety of electrical components that make up modern electrical devices. Glass fibers play an important role in the electrical behavior of a printed circuit board. They have good dielectric properties, excellent thermal stability and they can provide sufficient mechanical reinforcement. They are uniquely suited to act as reinforcement in a printed circuit board.

 

Purchasing Fiberglass Chopped Strand Mat, please focus on Sichuan Sincere & Long-term Complex Material Co., Ltd, and contact email: fred@chinaweibo.com.cn or chat on Skype: fred.wei08