50 Years of Composites

N°2 - tuesday, april 25th 2023

History of Composites - Volume 2: The Last 50 Years & The Future

In 2023 JEC has decided to celebrate the expansion of the composites industry as a whole with a brochure dedicated to the progress of composites over the past 50 years and the years to come, reviewing the evolution of the materials, the processes, and various application sectors.

For this, JEC commissioned Ignaas Verpoest, Emeritus Professor at the Composite Materials Group of the Department of Materials Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, to document “the last 50 years of composites” and its key milestones and achievements.

While preparing this document, with the collaboration of Nelly Baron (VP Content, Marketing & Communication at JEC), Ignaas Verpoest received feedback and additional information from several composites professionals and specialists in specific areas. In fact, Stepan Lomov and Yentl Swolfs at KU Leuven, and former collaborator Bart Vangrimde (now at Huntsman, also VP of SAMPE Europe) have reviewed the text and provided essential feedback. For specific subjects, he required the input of Prof. Jim Thomason (University of Strathclyde, Scotland) on glass fibres, Fumihiko Tanaka and Ichiro Taketa (Toray) on carbon fibres, Hans Lilholt (retired from Risoe-Denmark) and Frans Van Hulle (retired from ECN-Petten, The Netherlands) on wind turbines, and Prof. Karel Van Acker (KU Leuven) on sustainability.

Readers will be able to journey through different areas of the composites industry, gaining a deeper appreciation of the materials, the technological advances and their impacts on different application sectors.

Also included the Volume 1, “50 Years From Now - Composites: Past, Present & Future” where readers will be able to journey from pre-history till the 70s gaining a deeper appreciation of the market trends and technological advances which have brought us to the last fifty years.

Continual innovation is advancing the performance, efficiency and sustainability of the composites industry in the drive for solutions to the challenges posed by the megatrends transforming our world.

www.jeccomposites.com

N°1 - march 3, 2020