Affordable COMPosites for LIghtweight Car StructurEs (ACOMPLICE)

Carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) in volume production for the mainstream automotive sector have, to date, been limited by perceived high raw material cost, ineffective design and labour intensive manufacture.This project aims to facilitate an increase in the use of CFRP and other high-performance composites in selected components by optimising automation in component lay-up and processing phases, alongside the development of material formats (tack-free prepregs) tailored to suit automated handling and deposition. This will be demonstrated via the production of fully-representative prototype parts. The primary objectives are i) weight saving (target 40%) by replacement of steel with high performance composites and ii) cost reduction (target 40%) over currently produced CFRP components via materials development and manufacturing automation.