The future use of structural composite materials in the automotive industry

The automotive industry's use of structural composite materials began in the 1950s. Since those early days, it has been demonstrated that composites are lightweight, fatigue resistant and easily moulded to shape in other words, a seemingly attractive alternative to metals. However, there has been no widespread switch from metals to composites in the automotive sector. This is because there are a number of technical issues relating to the use of composite materials that still need to be resolved including accurate material characterisation, manufacturing and joining. This paper reports the findings of a recent European initiative that examined the future use of composite materials in the aut…

A comparative evaluation of crashworthy composite sandwich structures

Abstract This paper describes an experimental evaluation of the energy absorption properties of a series of novel designs for cost-effective crashworthy composite sandwich structures. All the designs are based on the concept of the “tied-core” sandwich, i.e. the use of additional core reinforcements that act to tie the opposing facings of a sandwich together, thus preventing catastrophic failure under edgewise loading. The design, manufacture and crush testing of hollow rectangular tubes fabricated from six different tied-core concepts is described. Factors that are shown to promote high energy absorption include large, continuous areas of contact between the facings and the ties, non-thin …

Determination of the flexural properties of sandwich beams with multi-cellular reinforced cores