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‘Fat-tailed Failure Strength Distributions And Manufacturing Defects In Advanced Composites – Nature’

Nature Jul 17, 2025

This study investigates how manufacturing defects transform the statistical distribution of failure in carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composites under tension and compression loading. The analysis of tension and compression specimens reveals that defect-free composites exhibit relatively narrow unimodal strength distributions. In contrast specimens with porosity or fiber waviness develop more complex multimodal probability densities with fat-tailed distributions and substantially higher variability. Applying Jensen8217s inequality demonstrates that this increased variability can be assessed to identify higher risk profiles. These findings indicate that defects in composites don8217t simply reduce mean strength values but alter the statistical nature of composite failure transforming thin-tailed unimodal well-behaved distributions into multimodal fat-tailed ones. Such transformation necessitates more sophisticated probabilistic approaches for reliable design and strength prediction in safety-critical applications where understanding tail risk becomes crucial to proper risk management.

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LCM Launches PFAS-Free Structural Film Adhesive Solution

July 10th, 2025 - Product LC-E258, a high-performance structural film adhesive engineered to replace existing film adhesives that are being discontinued due to the presence of PFAS chemicals (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).