Cars should achieve environmental protection through lightweighting. An important method is to replace metal parts with fiber-plastic composites that have the same stability as metals. A team and partners from the Fraunhofer Institute for Materials and Systems Microstructure Research in Halle (Saale), Germany, jointly developed fiber-reinforced plastic composites. These composite materials not only have very good lightweight properties, but are also produced on the basis of renewable raw materials.
Fiber plastic composite material is an ideal lightweight structural material, it has high strength, high rigidity, low density, but also has good damping performance, corrosion resistance.
In a joint research project with BYK Chemie GmbH in Wesel, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and GK Concept GmbH in Dresden, Germany, Fraunhofer IMWS developed semi-finished products reinforced with bio-based continuous fibers. These semi-finished products, also known as UD belts, consist of continuous fibers stacked in parallel and a thermoplastic matrix based on polylactic acid. By adding fibers to polylactic acid to form an annular fiber-reinforced membrane. Stacking and hot pressing multiple thin film layers can produce high-performance plates. When further processing these, the fiber orientation in the assembly can be directly adapted to the load in future applications.
Ivonne Jahn, the head of the fiber composite semi-finished product group of Fraunhofer IMWS thermoplastics, said that we connect high-quality bio-based fibers with the thermoplastic matrix as the main material to obtain materials with very good mechanical properties, such as bending and tensile properties. Our development work is very good for the application of sustainable lightweight structures. In collaboration with GKC GmbH, their colleagues at Fraunhofer Pilot Plant Center Polymer Synthesis and Processing PAZ in Schkopau used hybrid injection molding and compression methods to produce various sample pilot components, such as armrest indicators.
The development of such technologies and materials has laid the foundation for the future use of these biopolymer-based composite materials in the automobile manufacturing industry. Ivonne Jahn foresees a variety of possible applications in the field of bio-UD tapes: the performance of composite laminates is getting better and better. For example, in the future industrial scale, it is possible to manufacture more economical special parts for automotive interiors. The existing innovations and advanced processes in the factory center, coupled with new material combinations, increase the potential for future lightweight construction. Therefore, bio-based composite materials are indispensable for the application of new generation materials.