Technology Maturity Assessment of Carbon Composite Components
Authors: Fischbach Conrad W.P. 
Published: September 2013

Models to assess the maturity of a technology are commonly used in the aerospace sector. They give insights about technological risks and help to time the integration of new technologies to ensure their safe usage for society. Those models can also generate benefit for other sectors, such as the general mechanical engineering sector, when it comes to the assessment of new and complex technologies. Despite the big success of maturity models in the aerospace sector the usage of those models in general mechanical engineering lacks far behind its potential. Looking at actual trends as progressive globalisation and increasingly complex technology developments it will become more important to have a standard method for the maturity assessment of complex technologies. Especially for a small and medium-sized enterprise it is essential to have a clear understanding about the potentials and risks related to a new technology. One example of an upcoming technology for general mechanical engineering is the rise of carbon composite materials. They offer big potentials (e.g. light weight and excellent dynamic behaviour) on the one hand, but raise many technological and economic issues (e.g. missing connecting concepts as well as new process chains and costs) on the other. This article presents a method to assess the maturity of carbon composite components for their usage in general engineering applications. Different approaches for the maturity assessment of technologies were analysed. All concepts describe a technology’s maturity using multiple maturity phases. Those phases can either be passed in parallel or sequentially, which means that one phase has to be completed before the next phase can start. Further analysis showed that a technology’s maturity can best be described when stating not only the development risks but also the uncertainties about the future possible performance of a technology. With the described aspects in consideration the approaches were additionally adjusted to the special needs that arise when it comes to assessing materials: Manufacturing processes as well as component design are usually affected by material substitution. This applies in particular for carbon composites, because manufacturing processes and product design play a very important role for the final material characteristics and component performance. In collaboration with technology users, typical components with a generic character for general mechanical engineering applications were defined. To assess the technological maturity of those components the actual state of knowledge in the different necessary disciplines (e.g. conceptual design, dimensioning and computation methods, manufacturing techniques etc.) was consolidated. The research resulted in the creation of a concept to assess the maturity of material technologies in seven parallel phases. Those phases can be visualized as a maturity profile and two indicators can be derived, one indicating the uncertainty about the technology’s real capabilities, the other indicating the risks concerning the efforts necessary to actually develop the technology. Based on this concept a generic method was developed to assess a certain type of carbon composite component, where the specific requirements (e.g. forces, connecting joints, chemical resistance etc.) can be set individually. Those requirements are linked to the actual state of knowledge and define the level of completion in the different maturity phases, thus leading to the actual maturity profile and indicating the risks and uncertainties, which come along with the required carbon composite component. The results show significant differences in the maturity profiles of the different carbon composite components even though the material is the same. This implies that materials cannot be evaluated solely, because the interdependencies with manufacturing techniques and component design have to be taken into account.