A team of experts from industry and academia led by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to develop predictive engineering tools for the design of new, economical and lightweight automotive composites.
Under the U.S. regulations, the average fuel economy for cars must reach 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, an increase of nearly 60% from the current 35.5 miles per gallon.Without any doubt, weight-loss is the search for carmakers seeking to improve fuel efficiency One of many ways, and carbon fiber reinforced plastic is one of the most promising lightweight materials.
Although stronger and lighter than steel, carbon fiber composites are relatively expensive and therefore the use of materials is even more pressing.Compared with metals, the modeling of carbon fiber composites is more complicated because the properties of the carbon fiber composites depend on the manufacturing Fiber content in the process, fiber length distribution, and fiber orientation.
To accelerate the development of a new economy of long carbon fiber composites, a team of leading experts from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been working on a series of engineering tools including automaker Toyota Motor Corp., first-tier parts supplier Meg PlastiComp, Inc., a provider of long carbon fiber materials and technologies, Autodesk, a leading provider of process modeling software, and research partners from the University of Illinois, Purdue and Virginia Tech.
The team was funded by DOE's Vehicle Technology Lightweight Materials Program Office and the software tools developed successfully predict fiber orientation and length distribution in complex carbon fiber thermoplastic parts.
The development of composite parts requires that automakers manufacture and test molds, parts and components, a lengthy and painstaking process that is detrimental to the rapid development of new and more cost-effective carbon fiber composites in the automotive industry. Northwestern National Laboratory-led team-validated engineering development software will allow manufacturers to 'see' what the structural properties of the proposed carbon fiber composite design will look like before molding. "These tools will allow manufacturers and automotive components Designers to test faster and explore new ideas.
The team used Autodesk Moldflow software to predict fiber orientation and fiber length distribution in molded parts based on a model originally developed by Professor Charles Tucker and colleagues.With the guidance of Toyota, PlastiComp and Magna, they used PlastiComp Materials, forming composite parts of long carbon fibers, and extracting fibers for testing by Purdue University and Virginia Tech.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory then compared the predicted performance of the simulation software with the test results of the formed fiber to verify the accuracy of the software and the model.North Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that the software tool successfully predicted the fiber length distribution (accurate 100%) and fiber orientation (88% accuracy).
In addition, as part of the project, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, along with Magna and Toyota, analyzed the performance benefits and costs of long carbon fiber components against standard steel and fiberglass composites.North Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that the Of carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite technology can reduce body system weight by 20%, but the cost of producing carbon fiber parts can be up to 10 times higher than that of steel parts Optimizing processes and structures with predictive tools can significantly reduce manufacturing costs for carbon fiber Paving the way for wider use in the automotive industry.