Composite reinforcement: Recent development of continuous glass fibers

Abstract Light weight, glass fiber‐reinforced composites have gained a broad, global acceptance in commercial markets with a total of more than 7 billion of US dollars in revenue since its first commercial production in US in mid 1930s. This article briefly reviews recent development of continuous glass fibers with a focus on high‐performance glass fibers. With accelerated commercial demands on high‐performance glasses and/or glass fibers, there is a growing realization of fundamental needs in decoding nature of glass structures or “genes” of glass structure building blocks and establishing their relationships to properties of glasses or glass fibers. The related database development can enable researchers shortening the number of product development cycles to bring new fiber products to the market. A special section is, therefore, provided illustrating recent progress in characterizations of glass structures by using techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and molecular dynamics simulations.