Alcoa said it had fewer orders for parts for airplanes, power plant turbines and fiber optic cables.
An extensive research project is currently being carried out at the University of Manitoba, Canada, involving the development of glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) wind turbine towers.
For wind power, Zoltek (26, ZOLT) is the low-cost producer of the carbon fiber that forms the backbone of turbine blades.
Offshore wind generation involves many of the industries that Japan is desperate to revive, from shipbuilding, which has lost out to rivals in China and South Korea in recent years, to heavy machinery, construction, batteries, electronics and advanced materials like the carbon fiber-reinforced polymers used in the turbine's blades.
Helicopter-styled wind turbines are made of carbon fiber, aluminum and fiberglass, weighing about 45,000 pounds.
Marine hydrokinetic (MHK) turbine blades are generally constructed from fiber reinforced polymer composites and are subject to large, highly dynamic fluid forces.
At Stateline, 140 miles of fiber-optic cable connect turbines to a computer in a trailer.
In this paper, a passive wireless sensor is presented for monitoring structural integrity of wind turbine blades manufactured using reinforced glass fibers.
These helicopter rotor or wind turbine blades are generally made of fiber-reinforced laminated composites and exhibit various competing modes of damage such as matrix micro-cracking, delamination, and fiber breakage.
Our problem is not American wages -- the manufacturing jobs we need are not low-wage, low-technology industries like shoes and apparel, but highly skilled and therefore highly paid jobs in innovative sectors like mass transit vehicles, electric cars, new battery and energy storage technologies, solar power, wind turbines, high performance building materials, carbon fiber for lightweight vehicles.
