![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
SAFETY * Germany - Researchers develop new thermoplastic fiber composite material to build safer cars
Pfinztal,Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany -Gizmag (USA), by Darren Quick - August 18, 2010: -- Vehicles used to be predominantly made of steel, but to reduce weight and cost today’s vehicles are now built from a mixture of materials including steels, aluminum and fiber-reinforced plastics. Highly stressed load-bearing structures and crash components constructed from composites are designed to buckle on impact to help reinforce the body and protect the vehicle‘s occupants in the event of a collision. But these materials tend to chip into sharp-edged splinters on impact. Researchers have now found a way for the automotive industry to mass-produce a particularly safe class of materials that can absorb the enormous forces generated in a collision without splintering... Currently used composites constructed using a thermoset matrix not only tend to splinter, they are also difficult to mass produce efficiently and cannot be recycled. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT) claim to have now found a solution to these problems by developing a new class of materials designed for large-scale use in vehicle construction called thermopastic fiber composites... Not only can they be shredded, melted down and reused to produce high quality parts, they have also been found to perform significantly better in crash tests. When reinforced with textile structures they absorb the forces generated in a collision through viscoelastic deformation of the matrix material – without splintering... The Fraunhofer researchers have named their technique “thermoplastic RTM” (T-RTM). It is derived from the conventional RTM (Resin Transfer Molding) technique for thermoset fiber composites and forms the composite in a single step... The researchers say that the cost of the thermoplastic matrix material and the cost of its processing are up to 50 percent lower than the equivalent costs for thermoset structures. Over the next few years the researchers anticipate that these kinds of components will start to be used in vehicle and machine construction as well as in the leisure industry... (Image: wrhowell via Flickr - Researchers say their new material won't splinter like the bumper of this Toyota) Labels: safety
posted by Unknown @ 12:42 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home