TABLE OF CONTENTS No engineer or designer can be ignorant of plastics, but the decision to use a new material is difficult and important. It has both technical and economical consequences. It is essential to consider:
the actual penetration of the material category in the industrial area
the abundance or scarcity of the material and the process targeted
the functionalities of the device to be designed
the characteristics of the competing materials
the cost
the processing possibilities
the environmental constraints.
The goal of the facts and figures that follow is to help clarify quickly the real applications for thermoplastics and thermoplastic composites and the relative importance of the various material families and processes involved.
Usually, material consumption is considered in terms of weight (Table 1.1), but it is also interesting to examine:
the consumption or production in terms of volume (Table 1.2), which is the most important for fixed part sizes
the consumption linked to the rigidity of the engineering materials (Table 1.3).
In this last case, if the reference material, of unitary section area and unitary length, is M 0 (volume V 0 = 1) with Young's modulus E 0, it can be replaced with material M 1 with unitary
| Year | Plastic | Steel | Aluminium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | 30 | 595 | 10 |
| 1975 | 40 | 644 | 13 |
| 1980 | 48 | 716 | 16 |
| 1985 | 68 | 719 | 17 |
| 1990 |
