The specialities of fibre-reinforced plastics in terms of product lifecycle management

Since the use of fibre-reinforced plastics and computer based data management systems increased over the last decades, the need to define and organize the material-specific data of FRP in those data management systems is demanding. Because of the differences in material characteristics of metals and reinforced plastics, most data management systems have to be adjusted. The user has to be aware of all specialties of FRP to decide about the use of those complex materials. There are differences between metals and FRP in almost every phase of the product lifecycle, like the material construction in the definition phase, like more process parameter in the realization phase, like the challenging service in the usage phase and the often-expensive disposal in the recycling phase. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.