Carbon Fiber Bikes Taking Over the Cycling Industry: Here's What You Need to Know About the Ubiquitous Material

Carbon fiber material essentially took over the cycling industry two decades ago. Since then, manufacturers have continued to produce lighter, stiffer, and more impressive designs thought to be impossible to make.

Carbon fiber is light and strong, which helps cycling enthusiasts improve their speed. The Portuguese company Carbon Team is betting on it to make high-end bicycles in Europe. However, carbon fiber can be obscure and mysterious compared to other metals.

Below are some facts about the ubiquitous metal.

(Photo : YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP via Getty Images)
Japanese actress Mayuko Kawakita displays Taiwanese IT company Dafon Innovation's electric power assisted bicycle "Besv PS-1" in Tokyo on April 27, 2015.

What is Carbon Fiber

Carbon fiber is a polymer material that is also sometimes referred to as graphite fiber, according to Innovative Composite Engineering (ICE). It is solid, with a strength equivalent to five times the strength of steel and twice its stiffness.

In addition, carbon fiber is also very lightweight. It is even lighter than steel, making it an ideal material for manufacturing many parts in vehicles.

But aside from that, the said material is high in tensile strength, has a low weight to strength ratio, high in chemical resistance, is tolerant to excessive heat, and has low thermal expansion. Carbon fiber is popularly used in many industries, including aerospace, automotive, military, and recreational applications.

Carbon fiber is made from thin, strong crystalline filaments of carbon used to strengthen the material. It can be made thinner than a strand of hair and still be more robust than a yarn twisted together.

In that sense, it can be woven to form cloth and take permanent shape when laid over a mold and coated in resin or plastic.

Five Things You Should Know About Carbon Fiber

To further shed light on carbon fiber, here are some facts about this lightweight yet strong material according to the website Bicycle:

1. Not all carbon fiber frames used in bicycles come from Asia. Although raw carbon comes mainly from Taiwan and China, not all carbon fiber frames are made there. Some carbon fiber frames and parts are also made in the US, Portugal, Tunisia, and France.
2. Carbon fiber comes in many forms. There is more than one kind of carbon because it can come in various forms. They can either be a thread, sheet, or chopped. Sometimes, sheet carbon fiber comes as clumps, but they are most common in bike frames.
3. Carbon fiber is only half of the material- Carbon fiber alone is quite brittle and prone to cracking or splitting. To preserve its incredible abilities, engineers would add epoxy resin before it is molded to form a composite material and is used in the bike industry. The resin adds toughness and durability to the material to help absorb shock or crash.
4. The classic, cross-woven carbon fiber look is primarily cosmetic. The look adds little to the material's performance since its main purpose is to add a top sheet that is allowable to be scratched, dented, and dinged. It mostly provides a cosmetic layer to show the builder's craftsmanship since creating it needs high precision expertise.
5. Carbon fiber can be repaired. Contrary to popular belief, a damaged carbon fiber frame can be repaired like a steel or titanium. The process is almost similar, wherein the damaged section is cut and then a new material that is cured, sanded, and painted is patched to the damaged area. Most of the time, the repaired section is not even noticeable.

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