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This year’s theme is “Performance with Purpose.” In infrastructure and construction applications, composite materials can offer a variety of performance benefits over traditional materials like wood or metals, including light weight, corrosion resistance, durability, higher strength and design flexibility.

These advantages can serve larger purposes like enabling infrastructure to withstand extreme weather events, speeding assembly of buildings to help combat housing shortages, contributing to sustainability goals by increasing energy efficiency or decreasing manufacturing-related carbon emissions and more.

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Here are just a few recent applications of composites in infrastructure and construction:

• In building construction, structural insulation panels (SIPs) made using fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets versus traditional wood can be assembled faster and are more durable.
• Composite rebar, including potentially rebar made with recycled carbon fiber, is used to reinforce concrete buildings and bridges, marinas and other applications – reducing weight, adding durability and offering corrosion resistance versus traditional steel.
• To support growing energy needs, conductor cores made from pultruded composites can significantly increase transmission capacity of electrical utility infrastructure, reduce electrical losses and enhance grid resilience to extreme weather events.
• Composite pedestrian bridges offer fast assembly and high strength.
• Pultruded or filament-wound composite utility poles can be tailored in their design and materials to suit a variety of needs, including resiliency in extreme weather conditions like storms and wildfires.
• Composite materials can enable the design of complex interior and exterior architectural elements not possible to achieve without composites’ tailorability, light weight or strength.

This NCW, we celebrate the ways composites are enabling these and many other infrastructure and construction applications, and aim to continue advocating for their increased adoption.

Want to dive deeper? Below are links and summaries to a few of CW’s most recent articles covering innovations in this field. For more content (including company news and new product announcements), visit our Infrastructure and Construction topic pages.

Composite SIPs for more affordable, efficient and sustainable buildings

Modular Brands’ LiteSIP panels and modules enable framing for residential and commercial buildings in days, cutting structural labor and total cost by up to 70% and 30%, respectively, while increasing energy efficiency and durability.

The potential of rCF in fiber-reinforced concrete

This column by recycling company Carbon Fiber Recycling takes a look at how emerging technologies for FRP concrete provide alternatives to traditionally used steel and glass fibers that are more cost-effective and address the sustainability challenge.

CW Talks podcast interview with Francesco Ierullo, Exel Composites

In this podcast interview, Francesco Ierullo, vice president of sales and marketing at Exel Composites discusses the role the composites manufacturing processes of pultrusion and pullwinding are playing in infrastructure and renewable energy applications today.