Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister Avinash Chander on Thursday said stated that composite materials were the future of scientific advances.
From high-end defence applications including artillery shells and rocket-motor casings to high-speed trains, railway coaches and the fuselage of airplanes, composites have a wide variety of usage, Dr. Chander said.
Considering the enormous potential they had, it was time that the industry came together to work on quality and standardisation issues.
“While the utility of composites are ever-expanding, we need to examine the equipment that will make them and the processes required to strengthen the composite matrix. We should also work on being cost-effective,” Dr. Chander told a gathering of industry representatives at the inauguration of a three-day international conference and exhibition on reinforced plastics here.The challenges that needed to be addressed were many, starting from constantly increasing the strength of composites, to the number of trained personnel required. “Over the next decade, we estimate that we will need at least 1,00,000 engineers who will deal in composites alone. That is why we need to make composites a specialised, standalone subject, like metallurgy, in our universities,” he said.
Earlier, Telangana Industries Minister Jupally Krishna Rao said the State Government would allot 200 acres in the Ibrahimpatnam industrial cluster, exclusively for use by industries in the reinforced plastics and composites sector.
