With the rapid development of global marine exploitation and shipping industries, structural components of ships and marine engineering have put forward higher requirements for lightweighting, high strength, corrosion resistance, and long-term reliability. Modern ships not only pursue high speed, low fuel consumption, and high load capacity, but also need to maintain structural safety and durability in complex marine environments. Marine engineering structural components such as offshore wind power platforms, marine floating facilities, and deep-sea exploration equipment are also exposed to harsh environmental conditions including long-term wave impact, salt spray corrosion, ultraviolet radiation, and temperature-humidity changes.

Traditional structural components of ships and marine engineering mainly adopt steel or aluminum alloys. Although these materials have certain strength and processability, their high density leads to increased structural weight. Meanwhile, metal materials are susceptible to seawater corrosion and fatigue damage, which raises maintenance costs. Thermosetting composites, despite their lightweight advantages, have limitations such as long molding cycles, difficult repair, and insufficient impact toughness, restricting their large-scale application.

Continuous Fiber-Reinforced Thermoplastic (CFRT) prepreg unidirectional tapes, relying on their high specific strength, high specific modulus, toughness, and rapid forming and repair capabilities, provide an innovative solution for the lightweighting and corrosion resistance of structural components in ships and marine engineering. By laying continuous fibers along the main stress-bearing directions, the thermoplastic matrix offers toughness and impact absorption capacity, enabling structural components to maintain high strength, fatigue resistance, and corrosion resistance while reducing weight. This article systematically elaborates on the application practice of CFRT in structural components of ships and marine engineering from the aspects of material properties, manufacturing processes, application practices in ships and marine engineering, performance optimization strategies, economic and environmental benefits, technical challenges and solutions, as well as future development trends.

Ship structural components such as hull skins, decks, bulkheads, and support frames bear wave impact, navigation inertia force, and ship-borne dynamic loads. Hull weight directly affects fuel consumption, navigation speed, and maneuverability. Excessively heavy structural components will increase propulsion load and energy consumption, while also exerting negative impacts on hull stability and safety.

Marine engineering structural components such as floating platforms, deep-sea exploration equipment, and offshore wind power infrastructure need to operate for a long time under wave, wind, tide, and extreme climate conditions, bearing high-frequency impact loads and corrosive environments. If structural components are too heavy or the material has insufficient corrosion resistance, maintenance costs will increase and service life will be shortened.

CFRT prepreg unidirectional tapes achieve lightweight design by providing high specific strength and specific modulus through continuous fibers; the thermoplastic resin matrix provides toughness, impact absorption capacity, and corrosion resistance, ensuring high reliability of ship and marine structural components in long-term marine environments. Compared with traditional materials, CFRT not only reduces structural weight but also improves fatigue life, impact resistance, and long-term weather resistance, providing reliable support for marine transportation and energy development.

CFRT prepreg unidirectional tapes are composed of continuous fibers and a thermoplastic resin matrix. The continuous fibers can be carbon fibers, glass fibers, or aramid fibers, which have high specific strength and specific modulus and can withstand complex loads on structural components of ships and marine engineering during bending, shearing, torsion, and impact processes. By laying continuous fibers along the main stress-bearing directions, key areas of structural components such as hull skins, deck beams, support frames, and floating platform structures are strengthened, improving the overall load-bearing capacity.

The thermoplastic resin matrix endows CFRT materials with toughness, impact absorption capacity, and rapid forming and repair performance. In the manufacturing process of ships and marine structural components, thermoplastic resins can be softened by heating to achieve precise forming of complex hull structures and marine engineering supports. Meanwhile, after local damage or collision, repair can be performed through heat treatment, reducing maintenance costs and improving material utilization. Thermoplastic resins have moisture resistance, salt spray resistance, ultraviolet resistance, and aging resistance, ensuring stable performance of structural components in long-term marine environments.

The comprehensive performance advantages of CFRT are particularly prominent in ship and marine engineering applications. Continuous fibers provide high stiffness and load-bearing capacity, and the thermoplastic resin offers toughness and impact absorption capacity, enabling structural components to maintain reliable performance under wave impact, wind loads, and tidal loads. Through optimized layup design, CFRT can achieve a balance between local reinforcement and overall lightweighting in hull skins, deck beams, floating platform support structures, and collision energy absorption zones.

Structural components of ships and marine engineering are subjected to long-term cyclic loads, wave impacts, and environmental corrosion, which are prone to fatigue damage. CFRT prepreg unidirectional tapes achieve fatigue and impact life optimization through the synergistic effect of continuous fibers and the thermoplastic matrix. Laying continuous fibers along the main stress direction improves bending and shear resistance, reducing the generation and propagation of microcracks; the toughness of the thermoplastic resin can absorb impact energy, reduce the interface stress between fibers and the matrix, and improve the long-term durability of structural components.

In marine environments, salt spray, humidity, and temperature changes will accelerate the fatigue failure of metals and thermosetting composites. By optimizing fiber layup direction, number of layup layers, and thickness distribution, CFRT achieves a balance between local reinforcement and overall lightweighting, improving the fatigue resistance and long-term reliability of structural components. Digital simulation technology plays a key role in fatigue life prediction, which can simulate the stress distribution and deformation state of ship and marine structural components under wave, wind, and ship-borne loads, providing data support for design optimization.

In the manufacturing of structural components for ships and marine engineering, the process technology of CFRT is the key to achieving lightweighting and high performance. Automated tape laying technology can precisely control the fiber laying direction, layup sequence, and tension, realizing the integrated forming of hull skins, deck beams, and floating platform support structures. Multi-axis robots can accurately lay continuous fibers along the stress direction, achieving local reinforcement and overall lightweighting.

Thermocompression molding and vacuum-assisted molding ensure full impregnation of fibers with resin, improving the density and mechanical properties of structural components. Zone heating and local curing technologies can achieve precise control of areas with uneven thickness, complex geometry, and stress concentration, reducing warpage and stress concentration. The combination of digital design, simulation optimization, and topology optimization enables structural components of ships and marine engineering to achieve the optimal balance among lightweighting, strength, and fatigue life.

Intelligent quality control further improves component consistency. Sensors monitor tape laying temperature, pressure, and tension in real time; machine vision detects fiber laying status; closed-loop feedback adjusts the tape laying and forming processes, ensuring that each hull skin, deck, and floating platform support structure meets design standards and satisfies the service requirements of marine environments.

Typical applications of CFRT prepreg unidirectional tapes in structural components of ships and marine engineering include hull skins, deck beams, bulkheads, floating platform support structures, and offshore wind power foundations. Hull skins, with continuous fibers laid longitudinally, improve bending strength and stiffness, and the thermoplastic resin provides toughness and impact absorption capacity, ensuring stable performance of the hull under wave impact and ship-borne loads.

Deck beams and support frames adopting CFRT can reduce structural weight, lower the ship's center of gravity, improve navigation stability, while maintaining high strength and fatigue resistance. Through optimizing fiber layup and thickness distribution, floating platform support structures and offshore wind power foundations achieve a balance among lightweighting, strength, and corrosion resistance, ensuring long-term marine operation safety.

CFRT can also be compounded with foam interlayers, fabrics, and metals to achieve multi-functional integrated designs for energy absorption, anti-collision, sound insulation, and heat insulation, improving the overall performance and reliability of structural components in ships and marine engineering.

The performance optimization of CFRT in structural components of ships and marine engineering is mainly achieved through fiber layup direction, number of layup layers, thickness distribution, and multi-material composite design. By adjusting the fiber layup direction, a balance between local reinforcement and overall lightweighting is achieved; by optimizing the number and thickness of layup layers, the bending resistance, shear resistance, and impact resistance of key areas are improved while reducing material consumption.

Multi-material composite design can combine CFRT with foam interlayers, fabrics, or metals to achieve multi-functional integrated structures for lightweighting, energy absorption, anti-collision, and heat insulation, enhancing overall performance. The selection of thermoplastic matrices is optimized according to the marine environment to ensure that structural components maintain excellent performance under salt spray, humidity, ultraviolet radiation, and temperature change conditions.

Structural components of ships and marine engineering adopting CFRT prepreg unidirectional tapes show significant advantages in terms of economy and environmental benefits. Lightweight structures reduce ship self-weight, improve fuel economy, and lower operating costs; thermoplastic resins allow rapid repair of damage through local heating, reducing maintenance costs and ship downtime. Automated tape laying and thermocompression molding technologies shorten the production cycle, improve manufacturing efficiency, and reduce mass production costs.

In terms of environmental benefits, lightweight structures reduce ship fuel consumption and carbon emissions during operation; the recyclability of thermoplastic matrices complies with the requirements of green manufacturing and sustainable development in ships and marine engineering.

The application of CFRT in ships and marine engineering still faces challenges such as complex forming of large-size structural components, high material costs, and strict standard certification requirements. Through zone heating, vacuum-assisted molding, and digital twin technologies, the forming quality of hull skins, deck beams, and floating platform support structures can be effectively controlled. Although high-performance continuous fibers and thermoplastic resins have high costs, the overall manufacturing cost can be reduced through automated production, layup optimization, and material recycling. Establishing standardized design, manufacturing, and testing specifications helps ensure that CFRT structural components for ships and marine engineering meet industry requirements in terms of safety, reliability, and performance.

The future development trends of CFRT in structural components of ships and marine engineering include highly integrated composite structure design, intelligent manufacturing and digital twin technologies, multi-functional composite structures, and green circular manufacturing. CFRT can be compounded with foam interlayers, fabrics, and metals to achieve the integration of lightweighting and multi-functionality, improving the safety, durability, and performance efficiency of structural components in ships and marine engineering. Intelligent manufacturing and digital twin technologies will further improve production efficiency and component performance consistency, realizing full-process digital control. Material recycling and green manufacturing will promote the low-carbon development of ships and marine engineering. The development of new high-performance thermoplastic resins will expand the application scope of CFRT, enabling structural components to maintain excellent performance under long-term marine environmental conditions.

CFRT prepreg unidirectional tapes have shown significant advantages in the lightweighting and corrosion resistance applications of structural components in ships and marine engineering. Continuous fibers provide high specific strength and specific modulus, and the thermoplastic resin offers toughness, impact absorption capacity, and repairability, enabling key structural components to maintain high strength, fatigue resistance, and long-term reliability while reducing weight. The combination of automated tape laying, thermocompression molding, and digital simulation optimization enables the production of large-size complex structural components, improving production efficiency and performance consistency. Multi-functional integration, material recycling, and green manufacturing strategies endow CFRT with long-term application potential in the lightweighting, high performance, and sustainable development of structural components in ships and marine engineering. With the advancement of material technology, digital design, and intelligent manufacturing, CFRT prepreg unidirectional tapes will become the core material for structural components in ships and marine engineering, providing solid technical support for marine transportation and energy development.