Natural fibers and Nano-Composites for Automotive Applications

摘要

Smart Materials (SM) are the futures of automotive industry. They are likely to play major role when industry is poised to meet more and more stringent emission norms, legislations on end-of-life of vehicles (ELV)which calls to use recyclable and environment friendly materials, concerns on use of hazardous materials, mandatory regulations on safety, NVH aspects and finally, not least but important, the customer driven performances. The applications of Smart Materials will have an edge in the competitive and global market to be frontier in commercializing the technology for the leading vehicle and component manufactures. In the midst of Smart Materials, Natural Fibers and Nano-composites will lead as multifunctional composites in the paradigm of reducing the weight for fuel economy and make cost effective competitive modern vehicles in the future. The paper reviews on upcoming Natural fiber composites such as jute, Kenaf, Flax, Hemp, etc with thermosetting and thermoplastics to replace conventional glass fiber composites and thus make eco-friendly structures and components. The futuristic material which has ample scope in undertaking R&D projects in materials and process deveropment, entirely new concepts in design of components is Nano-composites and is dealt in the paper to identify possible automotive applications based on their functional properties.