Carbon-fiber epoxy honeycombs mimic the material performance of balsa wood | Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Carbon-fiber epoxy honeycombs mimic the material performance of balsa wood | Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Cambridge, Mass. – June 25, 2014 – In wind farms across North America and Europe, sleek turbines equipped with state-of-the-art technology convert wind energy into electric power. But tucked inside the blades of these feats of modern engineering is a decidedly low-tech core material: balsa wood.

Optical photograph of a translucent hexagonal honeycomb printed using the baseline epoxy ink with ~1 vol.% carbon fibers added for visualization. The aligned black fibers are clearly visible within the cell walls and throughout the structure. The complete structure is 3 mm high and 30 x 40 mm in area, with cells that are 6 mm from wall to wall. (Image courtesy of Brett G. Compton, Harvard University.)

Like other manufactured products that use sandwich panel construction to achieve a combination of light weight and strength, turbine blades contain carefully arrayed strips of balsa wood from Ecuador, which provides 95 percent of the world’s supply.