𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐲 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐬 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡-𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐄𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐂𝐅𝐑𝐏 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐲𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲

Toray Industries, Inc., announced today that it has developed a materials design technology that enables the highly accurate and efficient selection of #thermosettingresin materials, used as matrix resins (see note 1), that achieve both recyclability (ease of decomposition and reuse) and mechanical performance in carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP). The company will demonstrate the technology in materials development in deploying highly recyclable #CFRP across diverse applications, including #aircraft, #automotive, and general industrial uses.

CFRP is increasingly being adopted as a structural material in applications such as aircraft and automobiles due to its lightweight nature and outstanding mechanical properties. At the same time, growing volumes of end-of-life CFRP are expected to drive increasing demand for recycling solutions. However, recycling thermosetting resins used in CFRP remains challenging. Technologies such as chemical recycling to recover raw materials and conversion to remoldable thermoplastic resins are required, resulting in high decomposition costs. In addition, achieving both high strength and durability while maintaining recyclability is difficult. Developing materials that satisfy these requirements simultaneously typically requires a lengthy development period.

Leveraging decades of accumulated expertise in CFRP design, #Toray has established a new material design technology that utilizes machine learning in the field of Materials Informatics (MI). It systematically organizes and trains data on the relationships between the molecular structures of resins in recycled CFRP and their recyclability and mechanical properties.

Toray’s model offers up to 25% improved prediction accuracy (note 2) than conventional counterparts when identifying matrix resin candidates that combine recyclability with excellent mechanical properties. The company also confirmed that resin compositions identified using this model, retained favorable decomposition and reuse characteristics even after being formed into CFRP. By applying the model, candidate materials can be efficiently narrowed down during the early stages of CFRP material design. This enables rapid design studies tailored to the performance requirements of applications such as aircraft and automobiles and is expected to reduce the number of candidate material evaluations through experiments and simulations by thousands to tens of thousands in the future.

Part of this technological progress was through the “Development of Circular Economy System” (note 4) initiative under Phase 3 of the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program of the Cabinet Office’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (note 3).

source : Toray