In the previous article on fasteners, we looked at a very clever design of threaded fastener that used a composite shank with the threaded portions of the component still produced in high-strength metallic materials. Not only do these fasteners use a polymer-matrix composite shank but, being made of multiple parts, they are, in the broader sense of the definition, a composite component. A European company has developed a new form of composite fastener that is a pure polymer-matrix...