Fibre Reinforced Plastics (FRP) and Composites are the new man-made wonder materials which are increasingly replacing the conventional wood, metals and concrete in hundreds of applications, ranging from aerospace and defence to automobiles, building, construction, transportation, chemical and other engineering industries all over the world. Composite materials have so many attributes and properties, and lend themselves to be easily designed and engineered to meet stringent specifications and requirements.

Composites offer special advantages, such as :
high strength and stiffness
light weight with easy handling and flexibility for improving performance
adaptability for design and prototype development for almost any required shape or function.
dimensional stability to sustain critical tolerances
low energy consumption
chemical and corrosion resistance
electrical installation properties, and above all,
low tooling and investment costs

While advanced carbon and aramid fibre composites have become the obvious choice for many structural parts and components in military aircraft and space vechicals, FRP offers unlimited potentials in civilian industrial applications.

Globally, composite technology and its applications have made tremendous progress during the last two decades or so, as evident from the present level of consumption of composite materials at about 2.2 million metric tons, with the Asian-Pacific region accounting for about 24% of this usage. Currently, about 40,000 composite products are in use for a hose of applications in diverse sectors of the industry all over the world. Many R & D Centre and composite materials manufactures around the world are continuing to work on more and more innovative solutions for novel and newer applications of composite materials and products.

Since its advent in India about three decades ago, composites technology and its applications have made tremendous progress in all sectors of the industry, more notably in the aerospace and defence sectors in which significant advances have been made in developing advanced composite materials for high-performance applications. India is also one of th few countries in the world to have developed advanced software packages for applications in the aerospace and defence sectors.

A striking example of the sucessful application of composites in the defence sector is the country's prestigious 'light combat aircraft', weighing only 9 tons, as compared to 19 tons for similar type of aircraft elsewhere in the world, on account of the extensive use of composites for its development. Similar achivements in the applications of advanced composites to the extent of over 40% have been made in the field of satellite and launch vehicle development.

However, in spite of these credible achivements in the developing advanced composites for the defence and aerospace fields, the Indian composites industry has still a long way to go and catch up with other advanced countries, so far as the general industrial applications are concerned. While China and India started making use of composites almost simultaneously about 30 years ago, the progress made by China i rather astounding with a consumption level of about 200,000metric tons, as compared to about 30,000 tons in India.

The future prospects for the composite industry in India is, however, appear to be very bright, thanks to the new policies of the Government of India for economic liberalization and accelerated industrial development of the country in all sectors. The Government is embarking upon a massive programme for infrastructure development during the IXth Plan (1997-2002), involving huge investments estimated to be over $200 billions on highways, bridges, airports, buildings, and construction, power generation and transmission, telecommunications and so on. These activities would, no doubt, require the extensive use of composite materials and products for the transportation industry, power transmission towers, telephone poles, pipes, water tanks etc.

In the area of development of composite materials and product development applications, the Government have taken a welcome initiative to setup a Technology Project in Mission Mode on Advanced Composites through the Technology Information Forecasting & Assesment Council (TIFAC) in the Department of Science and Technology, NewDelhi. Under this innovative programme, TIFAC has funded several projects in several academic and research institutions for composite product development and commercialization, manpower development and training. TIFAC has also approved a programme for setting up composite design centres in various parts of the country with the collaboration of the industry wherever possible. The first such composite design centre to be setup is the RV-TIFAC Composite Design Centre at Bangalore with the collaboration of the Rashtreeya Sikshana Samithi Trust, the National Aerospace Laboratories and CMC Limited.

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