To my thinking -
Composites are a combination of a matrix material and other materials that create a new material with properties different from the original components. That new composite material then can be made into items.
Mud+straw=brick, cement+aggregate=concrete, phenolic resin+cotton cloth=micarta, epoxy+glass fiber=fiberglass, acrylic+alumina mineral powder=corian, nylon+glass fiber=Zytel, epoxy+carbon fiber=carbon fiber composite
Laminates are layers of different materials adhered together. Laminated steels are 2 or more layers of different steel welded together. A new material isn't formed, but the beneficial properties of one material are used to offset the less beneficial properties of the other. Laminated steels are usually protecting a harder steel with poorer rust resistance or brittleness with tougher or more corrosion resistant steels to offset the "weakness" of the edge material. Sometimes it's just to offset the high price in a world of ever higher spiraling metals prices.
A sandwich of d2 between layers of 154CM would be a laminate. The fact that the billet is ground so that the d2 is the edge is a method that's been used with other blades in the past (notably the Cold Steel "San Mai" blades and a long tradition of Scandinavian blades as well as Japanese swords) and is the purpose of laminating the steels together.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=339919 http://outdoors-magazine.com/spip.php?article36
There have been some clever people that have jig-saw puzzled highly desirable expensive blade steel along the edge with lower performing steel in the bulk of the blade. Those are neither a laminate or a composite material, but the blade is called a composite structure. What I thought was just a laminate with an interesting grind revealing the interface of the layer actually appears to be a composite structure with the Tyrade and new Leeks. The blade isn't a composite material, but the blade is a composite structure (sloppy terminology, but that's just the way the terms go) of CPM D2 keyed and then fused to the 154CM body of the blade.
Pattern welded steel makers who make their steel in a can (powder) use solid shapes set in the powder and then forge weld the whole thing. Kinda looks like something like this may be going on, but I'm just guessing. They may actually cut the two interlocking shapes of the CPM D2 and the 154CM and then forge weld them together, but it would be easier in one sense to cut the complex keyed face of a billet of 154CM and then use the CPM process to form the D2 onto the end of the billet.
Now I gotta go and ask Ken.
