Sustainable Lightweighting Strategies: Long Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites for Structural Automotive Applications

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Fuel economy requirements and government regulations to reduce the carbon footprint of automobiles have driven vehicle mass reduction strategies in recent years. These strategies have helped the original equipment manufacturer (OEMs) to balance cost, mass, and performance by introducing innovative technologies in materials selection and design, sustainable engineering, and manufacturing. Since lightweighting approaches have close relations with the vehicles' service life, they have significant effects on reducing automobiles' CO2 emissions. Composite materials offer excellent mechanical properties that can be translated to performance gains over conventional automotive structural steels. Among composites, long-fiber-reinforced-thermoplastics (LFRT) are of particular interest to auto industries due to their low manufacturing cost, superior mechanical properties, light weight, and recyclability. There is a huge interest in replacing the energy absorbing (metal) parts of automobiles with LFRT composites to enhance the performance of automotive parts in the event of crash.The knowledge generated during this research program will be transferred to the industrial collaborators in the field of fibre reinforced composite techniques to optimize their energy absorption properties under impact loading conditions. This will be achieved by developing sophisticated multiscale numerical models supported with advanced experimental characterization. During the course of this project, the fundamental knowledge of composite material behaviour during impact loading in different length scales will be advanced. In addition, mechanism driven multiscale models with predictive capabilities to simulate the mechanical response of composites will be developed. These models will be implemented as UMATs in commercial package LS-DYNA. Finally, using advanced mechanical and material characterization techniques, such as TEM/SEM studies and nanoindentations, fundamental understanding of fibre reinforced composites failure will be enhanced. This project will train 2 Doctoral, 4 Master's, and 3 undergraduate students in the field of composite materials. Canada will benefit from these trained highly qualified personnel (HQP). The HQP produced from this project will not only help to sustain the development of cutting-edge technologies but will also contribute to the competitiveness of Canadian OEMs.