Fibre Reinforced Composite Materials in Automotive Structural Applications

Fibre Reinforced Composite Materials in Automotive Structural
Applications
Abstract: Automotive industry has undergone numerous changes in regard to technological
advancement with the aim of improving efficiency. One of the advancement is the changes from
fibre reinforced polymers as composite materials in the manufacture of structural parts. This is in
efforts to manufacture light weighting automobile. This type of material offers enhanced
properties including better impact strength, improved moulding easiness, better aesthetics and
considerable reduced total weight of the automobile. This is comparison with using steel metal
for the same purpose. The major benefit of using the fibre reinforced material over steel in the
automotive industry is the possible massive reduction in total weights of the automobiles and
thus reduced emission of ozone gases due to reduced weight. This report discusses the benefits of
the fibre reinforced material in the automotive industry over steel material.
Keywords: automotive industry, composite materials, reinforced plastics and polymers,
requirements
Table of Content
Abstract.............................................................................................1
Introduction.........................................................................................2
Investigations and Research......................................................................3
Requirements of the Materials in Automotive Design........................................4
Conclusion..........................................................................................6
Appendix............................................................................................7
Reference............................................................................................9
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1. Introduction
1.1. Fibre Reinforced Composite
The automotive industry is reinventing itself from using metallic materials to now using
composite materials, fibre reinforced plastics, polymers among many more others which have
greatly improved efficiency, reduced weight and conserving our environment (Elmarakbi,
2013). The major benefits of this technological advancement is that it offer opportunities in the
automotive industry such as massive reduction of automobiles emissions to the atmosphere to
due considerable weight reduction when shifting from using steel material in this industry
(Vaidya, 2011). These technological advancements in the automotive industry has led to
unexpected great changes in the manufacture of the automobiles.
The main objective of automobile manufacturers is to reduce the total weight of an automobile
which has been a challenging task for ages. But with the introduction of this fibre reinforced
materials and other automotive composite, strategies are changing including and now there are
many more benefits including efficiency and cost (Mohammad Jawaid, 2018).
This fibre reinforced composite offers reduced total weight of an automobile while at the same
time offering better structural strength. In today’s automotive industry, fibre plastics and
polymers and becoming the ever-present components in some industries such as chemical and
automotive industries. This is because environmental conservation and global warming issues are
putting this two industries in the centre (Noton, 2016). And therefore, to improve fuel
efficiency, reduce cost of automobiles and conserve the environment, engineered plastics and
polymers are becoming the darling of automotive engineers and businessmen.
1.2. Advantages over Metallic Materials
Composites are being taken into consideration to make lighter, safer and greater gasoline–green
cars. A composite is composed of a high–overall performance fibre in a matrix fabric that once
mixed gives superior properties compared with the man or woman materials via themselves.
Fibre reinforced composites offer a wide variety of blessings to the automobile enterprise. it is
due to the fact the composite structures are the excessive energy/low weight ratio. Carbon fibre
such as bolstered composites offer several new design possibilities for structural additives in
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automobiles. those superior materials are not best light in weight, but also stiff, strong and
durable (Durand, 2008). The future light-weight materials may be used in the automobile
enterprise. The careful choice of automotive materials permits designers to improve sturdiness,
meet load–bearing requirements, and acquire reduction in car weight. Now carbon fibre is very
highly-priced, but the automobile enterprise has in development low priced carbon fibre, so the
future’s vehicle will be lighter. Fibre–reinforced composites are actually getting used to make
structural and non–structural additives such as seat systems, bumpers, hoods, and fuel tanks. The
introduction of commercial processing potential will in addition stimulate using those superior
materials within the automotive enterprise (Omar Faruk, 2014). The thermoplastic composites
permit car producers to produce low-cost structural components to replacement traditional
metallic answers.
With many years of development work in the back of it, the natural fibres enterprise is maturing.
certainly, it appears to be on the verge of leveraging the products’ numerous value, performance
and environmental advantages for massive-time technical and probably excessive-volume
business applications. within the automobile industry, as an example, herbal fibres, hemp, flax,
and others, are used in aggregate with polypropylene and different resins. they may be specially
properly appropriate for door and trunk liners due to their lower cost and decrease density (Anish
Khan, 2018).
2. Investigations and Research.
2.1. Joining process
To be able to obtain a strong and durable connection among composite and both frame steels, the
right joining parameters ought to be chosen. It is far important to apply sufficient laser energy to
soften enough fabric to fill the systems and create an interlocking. then again an excessive
amount of laser electricity can cause a decomposition of the plastic fabric, due to the fact the
temperature on the interface exceeds the degradation temperature of the matrix fabric. This ends
in a formation of bubbles inside the joining sector. These bubbles offer weak spots for cracks and
reduce the long-time stability of the connection. The decomposition of the fabric can be detected
through smoke and odour development and also trough bubbles seen in pass-sections. The
joining method is achieved thru simultaneous irradiation by zoom homogenizer optics. The spot
length is customized to the dependent area of the body steels. The technique parameters are
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selected thru version of laser electricity and irradiation time. Before everything the joining
parameters for frame metallic are evaluated. The samples are irradiated with special laser powers
The automotive industry is in the phase of incorporating new automotive composite resources,
components and various systems to ensure that there is a constant supply of the fibre reinforced
materials. And thus the automotive industry is trying to find ways of incorporating fibre, metals
and composite as a new way of manufacturing automobile parts such as doors (Pothan, 2009).
In order to produce more lightweight composite oriented the two major companies- chemical and
automotive industry should partner with other small scale companies such as plastic injection
factory with the main aim of creating a viable fibre reinforced materials for their industries. They
should partner and join forces in technology development on the material characteristics and
other issues. The use of composite materials and plastics is ever increasing especially on the
automotive industry, which is being driven by the huge demand from consumers for lightweight,
fuel efficient and less costly vehicles. What the automotive industry is doing is replacing heavier
metallic vehicular parts with fibre reinforced material and in other cases using both metals and
composite materials (Bai, 2013). As earlier said, on top of these materials being of less weight,
they are durable since they are not affected by rusting. Replacing heavier ferrous materials with
plastics and reinforced fibre materials have led to overall weight reduction. The percentage by
plastics has been increasing gradually from 6 percent in the 1970s to 18 percent in 2010. This is
the plastics included in the complete manufacture of automobiles. Statistics are as shown in
figure 3 (Lenoe, 2012).
Due to the properties that fibre reinforced materials and other engineered plastics have, they have
become the preferred choice of raw materials in the manufacture of automobiles. And the
capacity of this plastics and fibre materials to be cost effective, reduce emissions released to
atmosphere by vehicles, these materials are the future of automotive industry (Anastasios P.
Vassilopoulos, 2011). The weight reduction is achieved in the following ways:
- replacing materials of higher specific weight such as ferrous material to the lower
specific fibre reinforced materials without affecting the rigidity and durability.
-changing interior automobile design and external attachments such as vehicle doors
without any loss in rigidity or functionality.
-maximising the manufacturing process.
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