Some New Applications of Pultrusion Technology in the Automotive Market

 

 

Pultrusion is one of the most cost-effective processes for making high-volume composite parts. Most common are glass-fiber reinforced profiles for architectural and corrosion-resistant applications, with custom pultrusions for automotive applications—including bumper beams, roof beams, front-end support systems, door guard beams, chassis rails, and transmission tunnels.

 

The process was highlighted as a key area for growth by the European Pultrusion Technology Association (EPTA, Frankfurt, Germany) in its 2018 World Pultrusion Conference presentation.

 

Two commercial launches at CAMX 2018 (Oct. 16-18, Dallas, TX, USA) seemed to confirm this technology/market fit.

L&L Products, Inc (LLC) has introduced its Continuous Composite System (CCS) pultrusion process, which applies polyurethane resins to automotive applications such as side sills and crash structures. Designed to replace traditional metal structures that require bulkheads for necessary stiffness, the CCS pultrusions are lightweight—75% lighter than steel and 30% less than aluminum—and affordable.

 

Continuous fiber profiles include three variations: CCS Kit, which uses glass fiber, CCS Hybrid, which uses a customized blend of glass and carbon fiber, and CCS Extreme, which uses only carbon fiber.

A short fiber profile coextruded with an adhesive comprises a fourth product, CCS Co-Ex. The three continuous fiber products can also be combined with L&L’s adhesives as part of the company’s in-line processing, further reducing production costs and lead times. In addition to automotive, CCS products are also targeting wind turbine blade spar caps and industrial and construction applications.

 

 

Shape Corp. (Grand Haven, Mich., U.S.) is also developing pultrusion for automotive use, but with curved pultrusion. The company installed a Thomas Technik & Innovation (TTI, Bremervoerde, Germany) Radius-Pultrusion system for the first time, which it exhibited at CAMX 2018.

 

Shape, a global Tier 1 supplier of metal, plastic and composite automotive parts, purchased its Radius-Pultrusion system “to make automotive bumper beams,” as described in the June 2017 CW article “Curved pultrusion?,” for the 2017 CAMX ACE Award, in the category of Endless Possibilities for Market Growth. It uses curved pultrusion technology to create highly engineered hollow and closed profiles. The technology also enables the use of multiple types of reinforcements in a single custom laminate.

After extensive trials to develop the laminate structure and resin formulation best suited for Radius-Pultrusion, Shape selected polyurethane. “It provides exceptional toughness at a reasonable cost while enabling us to achieve very fast production speeds,” said Toby Jacobson, plastics materials and process manager/advanced product developer at Shape. “For reinforcements, we run unidirectional, biaxial and triaxial non-crimped [stitched nonwoven fabrics. We also pull some unidirectional unidirectional pultrusions where necessary.”

 

While most people are interested in carbon fiber right now, this process will outperform fiberglass and a variety of other reinforcements. “Polyurethane and hybrid fiber pultrusions are also being developed in Europe, where TTI is working with partners such as KraussMaffei (Munich, Germany) and Covestro (Leverkeusen, Germany).