NATURAL FIBRE-REINFORCED, INJECTION MOULDED POLYMERS FOR LIGHT WEIGHT CONSTRUCTIONS – SIMULATION OF SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS FOR THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
Year: 2015
Editor: Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Marco Cantamessa, Gaetano Cascini, Dorian Marjanovic, Serena Graziosi
Author: Albrecht, Katharina; Osswald, Tim; Wartzack, Sandro; Muessig, Joerg
Series: ICED
Institution: 1: University of Applied Sciences Bremen, Germany; 2: University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA; 3: Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany
Section: Design for X, Design to X
Page(s): 313-322
ISBN: 978-1-904670-67-4
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
Besides low fuel consumption and vehicle safety, more and more clients focus on sustainability issues buying a new car. Here not only the energy consumption during the production but also during the usage of the product has to be considered. To fulfil all these requirements natural fibre-reinforced polymers are a very good solution, combining light weight construction with renewable resources. To guarantee the crash-safety numerical simulations are essential in the product development process. Until now only functions to simulate glass fibre- or carbon fibre-reinforced polymers exist in the common software programs, but not for natural fibres. To close this gap the project NFC-Simulation was established. One of the main parts of this project was the characterization of natural fibres (like hemp, flax, sisal and regenerated cellulose fibres), including mechanical & morphological analyses and fibre orientation measurements. Crash-relevant components, glove boxes, were injection moulded with 30 mass% sisal fibre-reinforced polypropylene and experimental crash-tests were performed. The experimental results fit very well with the results from the process and crash-simulation.
Keywords: Natural Fibres, Simulation, Lightweight Construction, Sustainability, Ecodesign