I'm a bit of an insomniac and all sorts of random stuff goes through my head!  This time its composite related.  My thought is this:

We spend some effort considering fibre orientation for strength.  Has anyone ever considered resin orientation?  The resin is just polymer chains which we infuse into the fibre and link in a completely random orientation.  Whilst this gives a uniformly random matrix is this the best option?  If we could align resin chains and then cure or cross link in a certain orientation could we achieve better / stronger parts?  Could we 'grow' polymers through the fibre?  When I get work experience students we make nylon and I have them pull the fibre continuously out of the beaker as it grows so it should be possible. 

Anyways, enough of my ramblings for a pseudo friday.  What do you guys think?

There is probably not a good dependable way to "orient" the epoxy polymer chains, but my experiments seem to suggest that I can orient the content of carbon nanotubes that I'm adding to reinforce the polymer (Epocyl, made by Nanocyl, a Belgian specialist in Carbon Nanotubes)

Since the Epocyl makes the actual resin conductive to electricity, I've tried to add a low voltage potential from end to end in some test "bars" made from unidirectional CF and EC laminating epoxy (EL2) with Epocyl added.

Simple bending tests seem to indicate that the bars subjected to the electric field during curing are stiffer along the line of current travel through the material, however I still have no real measurements from this experiment.

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