Automotive giant Nissan has developed a way of incorporating a material used into airplanes, rockets and sports into mass-market vehicles to improve their performance.
The use of carbon fibre reinforced plastics can make cars that are safer and more fuel efficient. It can also lower a car’s center of gravity when applied to upper body parts, making it more agile and exciting to drive.
But the materials are expensive compared with conventional materials such as steel, as well as being more difficult to shape, hampering the mass production of automotive components made from the material.
Now Nissan - which has its main European manufacturing plant at Sunderland, employing more than 6,000 people - says it has found a new approach to the existing production method known as compression resin transfer moulding.
The existing method involves forming carbon fibre into the right shape and setting it in a die with a slight gap between the upper die and the carbon fibres. Resin is then injected into the fibre and left to harden.
Nissan’s engineers have developed techniques to accurately simulate the permeability of the resin in carbon fibre, while visualizing resin flow behavior in a die using an in-die temperature sensor and a transparent die. The result of the successful simulation was a high-quality component with shorter development time.
It is now hoped that Nissan will be able to mass produce body parts in carbon fibre reinforced plastics for use in its vehicles.
