Carbon fiber distruction

[Splint]

Hi all,
slightly off topic but I thought someone here could answer my question. I was in a shopping center the other day and the foxtel crew were there promoting their stuff and they were running a program from the discovery channel about the use of carbon fiber in formula one cars. One thing that caught my attention was when they did a crash test on some cf componants, the cf basically disintergrated into fine particles almost like dust, I have never seen cf behave this way when I see cars crash on tv. The capsule that the driver sits in does not behave this way, it was more the non safety componants which disintergrate to absorb the energy of the crash.
Can anyone explain what is done ot the cf to make it behave that way, is there a lower fiber content in the cf, different resin/autoclave process?

Thanks
Splint

[wet feet]

The tests you refer to are conducted by running the safety structure into a very solid object meaning that there are no flexible or sacrificial structures to absorb any of the impact.With a complete car,there is some absorption of energy by the collapse of the wings and suspension before the progressive collapse of the nose cone.Under the regulations, the safety cell should be undamaged after the impact.This does not guarantee the safety of the driver but it does provide a very good level of protection.The only possibilty of seeing the fragmentation on tv would be if the car was fitted with an onboard camera aimed at the impact point and a slow motion replay was shown.High speed cameras are often used to help the designers learn from the structures behaviour during the crash tests.As far as the resin/fibre content goes,the normal state of affairs is for an autoclave cured composite to have a much lower resin content and thus a higher fibre content.One other consideration is that there are several varieties of carbon and the higher modulus varieties tend to be strong but brittle.