Reduced cost materials and process for lightweight automotive structures

“该项目旨在证明新材料组合的概念，亚麻夹层结构，以及在之前的创新项目下开发的新制造工艺，以生产坚固，轻质和低成本的汽车车身结构和外部面板。通过独特的生产方法，该项目将研究生产过程的局限性及其对结构部件设计的影响。同时，该工艺将进行测试，看看它如何能够提供可接受的A类表面，而不需要进一步的精加工。该工艺提供低资本投资的生产工具，并支持生产低成本车辆以及使用单面模压面板的任何产品。一旦工艺得到调整，该项目将着眼于亚麻增强树脂的三明治结构，碳纤维外壳提供弹性和抗冲击性，并封装亚麻以保护其不受潮。这将侧重于实现适当的强度来承载负载，弹性，以承受重复的道路负荷输入和抗冲击。在实验之后，该项目将创建和测试汽车车身结构作为一个完整的组装结果。这将带来新的业务，带来新的商机——首先是Nedra的超低重量电动汽车系列，随后是许多寻求降低成本和重量的汽车应用。”

"This project aims to prove both the concept of a new material combination, flax based sandwich construction, and a new manufacturing process developed under a previous Innovate project, to produce strong, lightweight and low cost automotive body structures and exterior panels.Through the unique production method the project will investigate the limitations of the production process and the consequent impact on the design of structural components. At the same time the process will be tested to see how it can deliver acceptable A class surfaces that do not require further finishing processes. The process delivers low-capital investment production tooling and supports the production of low cost vehicles as well as any product using single side moulded panels.Once the process has been tuned, the project will look at flax reinforced resins in a sandwich construction with carbon fibre skins to provide resilience and impact resistance and also to encapsulate the flax to protect it from moisture. This will focus on achieving suitable strengths to carry loads, resilience to withstand repeated road load inputs and resistance to impacts.Following the experimentation, the project will create and automotive body structure to test the results as a complete assembly.This will lead to a new business with new business opportunities -- initially with Nedra on it's ultra-low weight electric vehicle family and subsequently in many automotive applications that seek reductions in cost and weight."