“The String and Glue of our World” is a book about the science, engineering, history, and art of making things out of composites told in a manner that is hopefully approachable, engaging, and entertaining, even for the casual reader. It is not intended to replace or even be a textbook on the subject nor for the serious practitioner who has lots of experience with composites and needs a reference book. You don’t have to be a Ph.D. engineer or scientist to understand the book and appreciate the significance and beauty of composite materials.

String and Glue is arranged in a sense like what Elon Musk describes as the most important way to view knowledge – as a “semantic tree”. In that vein, I introduce first the history and motivation for the why of composites, then start with the building blocks of these materials – the elements themselves from the Periodic Table and why each of the elements I focus on are important. This forms the trunk of the tree – the trunk of our semantic tree of knowledge of composites. Then I build out the branches of the tree with descriptions of the strings, glues, how they are put together, and who is putting them together. Of course, each of these three main branches has its own sub-branches. And then toward the end of the book I give you some ideas about how to get involved in this industry and make the magic happen for yourself. Follow me on this journey into this fascinating subject and maybe learn how to make the magic happen for yourself – become a composite material aficionado.

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What is the State of the Art in Wind Turbine Blade Recycling

#composites, #recycling, #windenergy, #thermolysis, #solvolysis, #pyrolysis, #sustainability I have talked about this repeatedly by giving examples of companies and organizations, some largely funded and supported by governments, in previous posts. This week, I thought I would provide a summary of what I see as the State of the Art in recycling wind turbine blades here in the US and in the EU and UK. A lot has happened in the last couple of years, and some companies are not

6 days ago9 min read

Update on REFRESH Project – New LCA Study on Wind Turbine Blades

#composites, #sustainability, #windenergy, #recycling, #renewableenergy A few weeks back I wrote a couple of articles, one about this project (REFRESH) and another about a company in Norway (Gjenkraft) that has gotten seed money to build a plant to recycle wind turbine blades using their pyrolysis process. And of course the day after I wrote the article the REFRESH project posted the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that they had performed by a consulting company in

Oct 156 min read

Revisiting an ICCM Paper – Continuous Carbon Fiber Recycling at NCCUK

#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfiber, #recycling, #fibers, #resins I mentioned this work in my post just after the ICCM conference...

Oct 85 min read

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What is the State of the Art in Wind Turbine Blade Recycling

#composites, #recycling, #windenergy, #thermolysis, #solvolysis, #pyrolysis, #sustainability I have talked about this repeatedly by giving examples of companies and organizations, some largely funded and supported by governments, in previous posts. This week, I thought I would provide a summary of what I see as the State of the Art in recycling wind turbine blades here in the US and in the EU and UK. A lot has happened in the last couple of years, and some companies are not

6 days ago9 min read

Update on REFRESH Project – New LCA Study on Wind Turbine Blades

#composites, #sustainability, #windenergy, #recycling, #renewableenergy A few weeks back I wrote a couple of articles, one about this project (REFRESH) and another about a company in Norway (Gjenkraft) that has gotten seed money to build a plant to recycle wind turbine blades using their pyrolysis process. And of course the day after I wrote the article the REFRESH project posted the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that they had performed by a consulting company in

Oct 156 min read

Revisiting an ICCM Paper – Continuous Carbon Fiber Recycling at NCCUK

#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfiber, #recycling, #fibers, #resins I mentioned this work in my post just after the ICCM conference...

Oct 85 min read

Investors are Interested and Taking Notice of the Recycled Composites Business

#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #recycledfiber, #recycledresin I have talked in this space about composites sustainability,...

Sep 306 min read

ABOUT ME

Ned Patton, Ph.D., P.E. lives and works in San Diego California. He has more than 40 years of experience in research and technology development, and has been involved with and has been a proponent of composites for over 35 of those years. Currently working at Oceaneering International as a senior technical professional, he is actively developing composite material parts and structures for use undersea.