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cost high. “In the past, the high cost ofcarbon-fibre composites limited their applications,” says Uzawa. “No one seriously
thought they could be a substitute for ironor concrete in practical structures.”

Kanazawa Institute of Technology

Moulding the future of 21stcentury materials
The open design of the new Innovative
Composite Center at the Kanazawa
Institute of Technology facilitates thecollaborations needed to tackle thechallenges of ageing infrastructure andsustainable material development.

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he samurai of Japan’s Edo periodknew about the importance ofmaterials — without the technology to forge and harden their razor-sharp
katana swords, these warriors would
have been powerless. Today, the city ofKanazawa, nestled between the Japanese
Alps and the Sea of Japan, is home to oneof the best-preserved samurai districts inthe nation. Also considered a traditional
home of Japanese scholarship, this vibrantlocation continues its long-standing association with materials science through thegroundbreaking work being conducted atthe Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT).
In 2013, the Japanese government
selected KIT to host the country’s largest
centre dedicated to composite materials— products constructed from two or more
substances with dissimilar properties, suchas flexible polymers reinforced with toughAdvertiser retains sole responsibility for content

carbon fibres. Completed in 2014 on a budget of over 2 billion yen (US$18.6 million),
the new Innovative Composite Center(ICC) aims to expand the use of composite
materials in a wide variety of fields throughinterdisciplinary, academia–industry collaborations in a facility designed to foster
openness and transparency.
“Composite materials are light, strong
and corrosion free. They’re anticipated to
be a key part of the next generation of land
and marine infrastructure,” says Kiyoshi
Uzawa, director of ICC. “Instead of just basic research and development, ICC focuseson the technology needed to processcomposite materials and on specific projects that can really impact society, such as
automobile parts and offshore windmills.”
Fibre fundamentals
Carbon fibres are usually produced byheating spun polyacrylonitrile, a polymer
similar to those used in acrylic clothing andcarpets, into long strands thinner than human hair. Heat treatment expels nitrogenand hydrogen from the precursors, leaving an extended fibre composed of fused,graphite-like carbon rings. The fibres areused to reinforce plastic resins, similar to
how steel bars reinforce concrete.
The chemical structure of carbon fibres
imparts the material with extraordinary
strength — more than five times that ofsteel — while remaining lightweight. Thesedesirable properties have led to it being
widely used in the aerospace and automobile industries as well as in consumer
goods such as sporting gear. But thecomplex machinery needed to spin, manipulate and heat process carbon fibres
makes them significantly more expensive
than metals. Because of this high cost, carbon fibres have found limited application,and hence their fabrication technology remains immature and their manufacturing

Putting vision into practiceJapan is a world leader in the carbon-fibre
market, with its top three players accounting for two-thirds of global production.
The ICC has a mission to open new markets for these unique materials and expand the use of composite materials in
more fields by promoting the application
technology development. To accomplish
this, the institute was constructed to promote partnerships between universities
and companies from the ground up.
The striking three-floor facility features
an accessible work environment: doors
and walls are minimized in large, integrated workspaces. Hallways are spaciousand designed to promote communication
between researchers. Plentiful windows
bring in natural light and encourage passersby to look in on their colleagues’ work.
The centrepiece of the ICC, however, is
its massive, open prototyping area, which
can be viewed from every floor of the facility. “One of the themes of ICC is to develop
markets for composite materials in offshore structures and infrastructure fields,”
remarks Uzawa. “This requires large machines for moulding and testing. Luckily,
in our layout, nothing blocks the view
— the lab and analysis zones surrounding the prototyping area are transparent,making work visible and easier to share.”
The right tools for the job
The ICC provides professional education encompassing a wide range of activities. Materials are engineered at thenanoscale to optimize their activity andthen rigorously simulated for structuraland process behaviour using high-levelcomputational techniques. X-ray andatomic-resolution microscopy ensure thequality of experimental composites.
If a new material meets the researchers’
standards, it passes from the design stage
to processing. Here, pressing machines,
custom moulds and high-temperature
autoclaves test the possibilities of advanced composite applications.

NATUREJOBS SPOTLIGHT ON TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITIES IN JAPANNot cast from the same mould
ICC has three focuses. The first is the Centerof Innovation (COI) project, which dedicates
800 million yen (US$7.5 million) per year tosolving real-world infrastructure problems
with composite materials. Carbon-fibrebased materials could allow infrastructuresuch as bridges, highways and high-risebuildings to endure for centuries withnear-zero maintenance costs. In marine
environments, efforts are underway to turnfibre-composite materials into lightweight,
high-strength sails for ocean vessels andblades for offshore wind power.
Through the combined efforts of 10 research institutions and 16 companies, theCOI project is striving to realize these applications using newly developed ‘continuous’ moulding technology. Conventional
composite processing laminates a material into shaped moulds, cures at highpressure and temperature, and then has awaiting period as the part solidifies. Usinga thermoplastic resin as the matrix enables
continuous moulding in a short time, permitting extended structural elements used
in infrastructure — for example, beams,
pipes and boards — to be produced effectively and at lower cost than previously.
The Ishikawa Carbon Fiber Cluster, ICC’ssecond project, is a collaboration between
KIT and local companies in Ishikawa prefecture to make an impression on the worldof thermoplastic composite manufacturing technology using ‘stampable’ sheets— intermediate materials of thermoplastic
resin-impregnated carbon-fibre sheet thatcan be moulded under pressure. This timesaving process makes composites moulding significantly more economical.
Revving up for mass production
There is a vital need to establish mass-production systems for composite materials
to make them competitive in the automobile industry, among others. Meeting thisdemand is the goal of ICC’s third project.
It seeks to advance ‘high-cycle’ mouldingtechnology by the resin transfer moulding
process. In this approach, thermoset andcarbon-fibre composites can be fabricated extremely quickly — under a minute,in some cases — through using high-pressure injection and a special resin transfer
mould that supports the formation ofcomplex shapes. This project is also exploring alternative fibre treatments andtextile technology to produce parts suchas automobile exterior panels, door shells
and even aircraft interior parts.
The benefits of going green
While the strength-imparting characteristics of carbon fibres attract much attention,
the accompanying polymer resins are set
to play an important role in expanding thepossibilities of composite materials. Butcollaborations between resin researchers and industrial engineers to search forpromising polymers are quite rare.
“ICC is the first domestic compositematerials research organization adopting afull-scale approach, which includes resin research,” says Uzawa. “One area we focus on,in collaboration with Kanazawa University,
is using biomaterials for composites.”
Increasingly, researchers are examining
renewable substances, such as woodbased biomass, as raw chemical sources
instead of petroleum products. In conventional biorefining, tough molecules suchas lignin and cellulose are broken down
into smaller glucose rings, which can thenbe polymerized into resins. The ICC adopts
a different strategy. “ICC is working on a
production technology that skips glucose
purification and produces resin directlyfrom lignin and cellulose,” Uzawa explains.
By promoting the products and manufacturing know-how of green, sustainable
composite technology, the ICC hopes tospark a transformative effect on society inthe next decade. “I see ICC as contributing
to a spiral of positive expansion: turning
practical examples into reality, will leadto the creation of new demands,” says
Uzawa. “It will be really exciting if thesecollaborations make ICC a major centre forcomposite-material research in Japan.”Contact
E-mail: icc-info@mlist.kanazawa-it.ac.jp
Website:
www.icc-kit.jp/en/
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SPOTLIGHT ON TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITIES IN JAPAN NATUREJOBS