Plastic composite materials: a classification for designers utility

In the field of composite materials, designer often meets several difficulties in understanding the available information, which sometimes are very specialistic, as well as in finding “different” information, which are necessary in order to make easier their choice for a more conscious design act. On one side this is due to a more and more extreme and wide specialization of the field of composite materials: this fact, on the whole, doesn’t help to identify the useful information for design choices. On the other side it is the expression of different educational paths, sensibility, fields of interest between the one who researches, classifies and informs on plastic innovative materials and the one who must use these information for products design. The consequences are the limits of traditional classifications of plastic composite materials, based mostly on mechanical, chemical and physical properties, which are sometimes also very complex and detailed: they don’t consider at all those performances connected to sensorial qualities of surfaces, which are nearer to sensibility and interests of designers. We think that it is possible and necessary to suggest an alternative “vision” of plastic composite materials, which flows into a new hypothesis of classification, structured according to the prevalent choice criteria of designers. This report is related to the results of a research developed in the Faculty of Architecture of Pescara (Italy). Starting from a critical analysis of the most traditional classification systems and from a recognition on some classification systems regarded as the most promising to guide the designer in the composite materials choice, a project reference frame has been defined, which is enough comprehensive of the definition of a new classification system. The research flows into an hypothesis of “expressive-sensorial” data-base, linked also to the manufacturing processes of plastic composite materials.