There is a Blog post entitled “Carbon Fiber or Black Aluminum?” at http://mountainbike.about.com/b/2007/03/14/carbon-fiber-or-black-aluminum.htm
that makes this point very clearly in the context of bicycle components. On comparing two specific bicycle handlebars, the author made the observation that:
“One of the bars was a fancy full carbon fiber composite marvel and the other simply aluminum. Both weighed exactly the same. I thought to myself, sometimes there’s well designed carbon fiber parts and other times there’s what we have here, fancy black aluminum. ”
An efficient composite component requires more attention in design and manufacturing processes than a comparable metallic component. If you treat the composite as “black aluminum” you will not achieve the full design potential.

The Stanford Composites Design Workshop is excellent and unique in its coverage, with practical insights for design and analysis of structures using composite materials. Professor Steve Tsai is a world-renowned authority on Composites, and provides many of the lectures personally. Prof. Tsai has formed an international team of Composites experts who provide additional depth in other composites applications. I will be giving two presentations: Composite Delamination, Damage & Failure and also demonstrating the use of MSC Patran, MD-Nastran, and MSC MARC for composite design in conjunction with the Mic-Mac/FEA design spreadsheet.
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STANFORD COMPOSITES DESIGN WORKSHOP
Organized by Prof. Steve Tsai & International Composites Experts
WebEx – July 21, 2010 to August 4, 2010 Daily; 8:00 AM to 12:00 Noon Pacific Time

This continuing series of unique online training, certified by Stanford University, has attracted hundreds of participants from leading companies and government agencies from six continents. Distinguishing features are software packages complementing fundamental and advanced theories and models. Engineers and materials scientists learn to make predictions of strength and life of laminates, with and without holes, failure modes on micro- and macro-mechanics scales, progressive damage, delamination, CAI (compression after impact), error estimation, biaxial testing, and to think “outside the box”, enabling simultaneous weight and cost savings. Internationally recognized specialists provide presentations, software demonstrations, practice, and problem solutions. The workshop starts on July 21st and ends August 4th, 2010, for 11 weekdays (with rest on weekends!). Each session starts at 8:00 AM and ends at 12:00 Noon California time. Sessions are provided live via WebEx, and also recorded for later download and replay on demand at your convenience. The Workshop fee is US$500 and includes a copy of the 2008 book Strength & Life of Composites, a dedicated WebEx connection, and a valuable tool box of software programs containing spreadsheet-based composites design tools, 3D Beam, and limited versions of commercial finite element software MSC MD-Nastran, MSC MARC, and Abaqus. An official transcript from Stanford University is optional. To qualify for the transcript, the participant must turn in the homework assignments, and an additional fee of US$100 is required. For participants of previous Tutorial/Workshops, the fee is reduced to US$250 and includes updated/new topics and software (but excludes the book). For questions, contact: Prof. Steve Tsai at stsai@stanford.edu, and for online registration see: http://compositesdesign.stanford.edu Join us and forward this announcement to your colleagues. Refer to the website for future Workshop dates.