Scott Bader worked with Shape to produce the first curved hollow pultruded carbon fiber bumper for the automotive industry for the newly released 2020 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray.
This pultruded bumper is made of Crestapol polyurethane acrylate resin from Scott Bader. The choice of Crestapol is because the resin has market-leading strength, toughness and light weight properties, and has strong processability and good adhesion to carbon fiber. Compared with traditional materials, it has a significant weight reduction while ensuring strength, which is very attractive. The ultra-light carbon fiber parts made of urethane acrylate resin help protect the rear of the Corvette and its enlarged luggage compartment.
For Scott Bader, this is an important project because it is the first pultruded part in the global automotive industry. To this end, Scott Bader's technical team has been working with Shape engineers since July 2016 and has overcome many difficulties. The success of this project proves that the high-performance composite parts produced by the pultrusion process can be used in the automotive industry.
Toby Jacobson, plastic materials and process manager of Shape's advanced product development department, said: "We value Crestapol resin most because it can withstand the temperature of electrophoretic coating. Crestapol resin provides the ability to replace others without affecting performance and processing speed Material solutions. Not only that, the part also needs to meet impact resistance requirements, and the resin plays an important role in meeting all the challenging requirements. "
In addition to Crestapol resin, Scott Bader also provides Crestabond adhesive to bond the bumper to the steel structure at the rear of the car. During the development process, the researchers tested several structural adhesives to find the best combination of strength and toughness to meet all the performance requirements of the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray model. In the end, Scott Bader's Crestabond M7-05 adhesive was selected because it showed the required bonding properties in high temperature tests.