LIGHTWEIGHTING CAPABILITY AND DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR CONTINUOUS FIBER TOW REINFORCED HYBRID-MOLDED COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

摘要

Driven to achieve improved fuel economy, the automotive industry is pushing to lightweight their vehicles using new thermoplastic composite material forms and manufacturing techniques while still meeting performance and production rate targets. Hybrid-molded thermoplastic composites utilize local continuous fiber reinforcement as a structural skeleton for molded parts. Use of unidirectional (UD) tow reinforcement in hybrid-molded composites increases structural efficiency and decreases part costs through placement of high stiffness/strength/cost continuous fiber only along primary load paths. The present work investigates the potential to increase structural performance and efficiency of parts by the addition of tailored, unidirectional tow reinforced preforms and how this compares to components manufactured with traditional methods and material systems. Using the improved structural efficiency, the potential for weight reduction of the novel material configuration is determined. These results help develop guidelines for determining how to achieve a desired performance for a given design space while minimizing weight. The analysis also provides insight to designing parts to avoid failure in the overmolding material by transferring load to the unidirectional material.