Stealth aerial vehicles: At present, aerial vehicles such as the B-2 Bomber, F-22 Raptor, Tacit Blue and F-117A, employ stealth technologies and it is expected that all new manned and unmanned combat aircraft will do so. Stealth aircraft have a low profile, with no right angles which are strong radar reflectors. No surfaces reflect radar directly back and this is ensured by covering with a coating of a radar absorbing material, which can be attained by matching the wave impedance with a resistive material of about 377 ω, which is where carbon fiber could be of use.
Space: Carbon fiber epoxy composites predominate in space applications and items like antenna dishes and support structures on spacecraft exploit the stiffness and dimensional stability of cfrp. An automatically unfurlable/retractable antenna was fabricated using light cfrp ribs to support a gold plated Mo mesh opening out to 5m diameter.
Orbital Science have built the X-34 rocket plane 17.6m long, with a wingspan of 8.5m, as a re-useable test bed and capable of speeds up to Mach 8, featuring an all composite primary and secondary structure. The fuselage components use carbon fiber epoxy skins with an Al honeycomb core.
Tomita has described an 8m collimation mirror fabricated from cfrp and Di Vita has shown how filament winding is a key technology for space propulsion. Blasi has described the use of tape wrapping for the ARIANES booster.
An attribute of cfrp is its low thermal expansion and combined with structural rigidity, a graphite/epoxy composite was selected for the main structure of the Hubble Telescope. The successor to the Hubble will be the James Webb Space Telescope, with backing struts and mirror support struts made from a carbon hybrid composite to operate at temperatures in the region of -235℃.
Rocket motor cases: Starchase Industries have launched Nova, a 11m tall rocket fitted with cfrp cowlings. Man technologies have developed a carbon composite booster case for Ariane 5 by laying up dry non-crimp fabrics on a cylindrical mandrel, using resin injection under vacuum and curing in an oven at ambient pressure.
Flywheels: A flywheel is a device for storing energy in a rotating mass and uses a high strength composite rotor mounted on a shaft, rotating in a vacuum with a motor attached to the shaft, which in the charging mode turns the rotor up to speed and in the discharging mode, acts as a generator to covert the rotor’s kinetic energy to electrical energy. The rotor is mounted on special bearings for stabilization and to minimize energy loss, is enveloped in a container acting as a vacuum vessel and safety entrainment. Carbon fiber/epoxy flywheels are claimed to have considerable potential for storing energy, with a regenerative efficiency of at least 85%. Work on flywheels is proprietary and not surprisingly, each organization claims to have developed flywheels of superior properties.
NASA Gleen Research center is very active with an aerospace flywheel development program and they depict the key components of a flywheel system.