Continuous And Discontinuous Fibre Engineered Composites (CADFEC)

Development of ever lighter vehicle bodies will increase efficiency and environmental performance of all Aston Martin vehicles through reduced vehicle mass, and offers opportunity for increased range and improved attributes of electrified products. Mass reduction is a critical element to achieving these improved vehicle emissions and efficiency. Replacing structural components with carbon fibre composites offer the largest weight reduction potential, with many examples now implemented in the low volume luxury car market. Migration to higher volume applications was hindered by the absence of affordable materials and of high volume manufacturing methods needed to control costs. A newly developed material from Dow, VORAFUSE(tm) EMC (EMC), is the first product that combines high volume materials production and manufacturing methods for lightweight carbon fibre components.

The use of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics (CFRP) in Body In White (BIW) structures could achieve a 30% weight saving over current aluminium vehicle structures and deliver direct improvements in vehicle performance and CO2 reductions. After the successful completion of the Innovate UK funded InterComp project, it has been identified that Compression Moulding could still offer a financially favourable option for an increased use of CFRP, but there remains material processing concerns relating to out-life, tack and the inability of pre-forms to hold their shape prior to moulding. CADFEC is a 18-month project aimed at tackling a number of critical R&D gaps that still exist in material management of preforms used in a 2-stage process (preform then mould), plus issues in achieving higher volume fractions required when using open-tooled Double Diaphragm Forming (DDF) process.

Dow EMC offers great potential in resolving a number of these issues and there is a strongly shared interest to collaborate between Dow and this proposed consortium to better understand the constraints of manufacturing process and their effect on properties (e.g. due to fibre alignment, weld/meld lines, combined EMC with selective prepreg usage).

Most current carbon composite automotive structures rely on additional metallic reinforcements or heavily cored sections to meet side pole impact performance requirements. The intention of this project is to challenge this strategy, combining the EMC benefits of cost and form with the strength and stiffness of continuous (i.e. woven or unidirectional) fibres. The project will therefore focus on mixed fibre architecture composites and the automation of the associated processes to ensure the technology is cost effective. A demonstrator component will be produced to showcase the capabilities of both material and process.