Review of Composites International Trade Magazine
I recently received a sample copy of Composites International in the mail. US and North American readers are probably more familiar with High-Performance Composites and Composites Technology, both published by Ray Publishing. While the latter two journals have only recently begun to take an international look at the composites industry, CI has always been an international publication.
I received the international edition of issue number 41, or the September/October 2000 issue. The international issue is bilingual, with all stories appearing in both English and French. Most pages are three columns wide, but only two are used for text. English appears in the left column, French in the right.
Most stories are only one or two pages long, and the bilingual layout further limits the content. The stories tend to lack many of the technical details that readers of the US publications may expect.
CI is divided into five main sections: Business Report, Applications, Feature, Know-how, and Science & Technology. Business Report contains a few short articles and news releases on news about companies. Typical articles are about joint ventures, new product announcements, market size, and executive appointments.
The international nature of the magazine becomes apparent almost immeditately. No special emphasis is given to companies from any one region. The Business Report section, for example, is equally divided among stories about the North American and the European markets.
The Applications and Feature sections are organized in a similar manner. Each consists of several short (one or two page) articles on a common topic. In this issue, Applications was about the aircraft industry, and Feature was about the automotive industry. Aside from the two different topics, I didn't see much of a difference in the types of material covered in the Applications and Feature section.
The Know-how section primarily covers new materials and processes. Again, many details I would like to see as a potential customer or user are missing. In some cases, the articles are fragmentary. For example, an article on analytical tools talks about Sysply and Composic. I was able to figure out that these are somehow related to finite element analysis, but there is no mention of the publisher, or whether the programs are stand-alone or modules in another program.
Likewise, an article about Flaxoprop describes a natural-fiber-reinforced synthetic material. There are some general statements about its properties and uses, but no information on where to purchase the material or get more details.
In contrast to the North American publications, there are no bingo cards with the numbers you can circle to receive additional information about a product or service. Each article has an e-mail address to which you can write for more information, but the address is the same for all articles. I haven't tested the service, but I wonder how efficient it can be.
Finally, the Science & Technology section is basically a brief technical paper. In this issue, it was about the design of compression C springs for vehicle suspension. This article has some good technical details, as one would expect from a paper as opposed to an article. The English translation, however, was not very good (in contrast to the rest of the magazine), and I had trouble following the article.
In summary, I found CI to provide good business coverage of the international composites industry. I also found some useful information on new products and processes. As an engineer, though, I was hoping to see more technical detail in some of the articles, or at least an easy way to request that information.
Composites International is published by JEC. Annual subscriptions are FrF 2093.53 (US$277 at the time I wrote this article); the sample issue I received came with a special one year rate of FrF 1282.50 (US$170).