But for the mainstream, composites are having a tough time competing with existing technologies.
The National Composites Centre (NCC) opened at Bristol and Bath Science Park in November 2011.
The complex skeleton of HB-SIA is constructed from carbon-fibre composites formed into honeycomb and sandwich structures.
The university in nearby Bologna, for example, is helping it to develop special steels, composites and plastics.
Lotuses are turned out in small numbers, but composites require too much manual work for volume production.
Hull and deck moulding, currently being done at RNLI SAR Composites at Lymington, will move over by 2019.
And Honda's new Insight saloon car is made largely of aluminium and composites.
By putting nano-composites into the design, such wind mills can get higher performance.
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Both composites are about 7.5% to 8% up from their recent early-2012 lows.
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The vehicles, made of lightweight composites, have a maximum speed of 50mph and a range of more than 200 miles.
Home prices rose 1.3% in April, according to both the 10-city and 20-city composites that make up the Case-Shiller indexes.
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It's built from composites instead of aluminum and comes with the promise of the most comfortable ride in the sky.
Like traditional composites, Dr Greenhalgh's material consists of woven sheets of carbon fibres which are made rigid using a cured resin.
However, a partnership between Ford and Weyerhauser has led to the development of plastic composites made out of cellulose instead of fiberglass.
More recently, he formed the holding company True North, which is composed of businesses ranging from advanced composites to venture capital investments.
Plastics and composites are already the materials of choice for interior panels.
"I was thinking about how textile composites and textile structures might be relevant in the context of renewable energy, " he told CNN.
Most of the car consists of carbon fiber and carbon skin composites.
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To get similar characteristics from composites, the carbon fibres are first chemically treated with an alkali which creates lots of tiny pits on their surface.
We've compiled the images (labeled with the firmware version, ISO and shutter speed) plus some composites (including 1:1 crops) for comparison in the galleries below.
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Examples include: high accuracy machine tools, deep underground tunneling machines, telecommunications equipment, underwater surveillance gear, sophisticated computers, manufacturing equipment associated with microelectronics, advanced composites and super-alloys.
These composites were initially banned in 2009, but they can be used now as long as BBCOR standards are maintained for the duration of a bat's life.
Virgin Chief Executive Richard Branson is using his fame, and money, to build a space tourism business using spacecraft to be built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites.
For a third consecutive month, all 20 cities and both composites were up in a monthly basis (the 10-city gained 1.5% and the 20-city was up 1.6%).
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Hexcel's composites business has been severely curtailed this year, not just from the Dreamliner delay but also as industrial customers cut back and wind turbine projects slow.
For that our driver would be getting a car made of expensive metals and complex composites that costs many thousands of dollars more than any comparable vehicle today.
The high standards of product testing required for the aerospace industry meant that the self-healing composites were not likely to be found in airplane construction any time soon.
This challenge goes beyond the goal of simply assembling composites.
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The latest model has newly designed, four-blade propellers made of advanced composites that save on weight (60 fewer pounds), reduce noise (inside and out) and lower maintenance costs.
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The 787, the first jetliner made from a majority of lightweight carbon fiber composites, eliminates hot, heavy and hard-to-maintain pneumatic systems that power key parts of the jet.
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