Affordable Structural Composites

The Motor Industry faces a tough challenge. Increasing fuel costs and increasing enviromental concern means that fuel efficiency is top of the agenda. It is unlikely that targets will be met through driveline development alone. Vehicle "lightweighting" offers efficiency from another point of view as it leads to an overall reduction in vehicle inertia - less energy required to speed up, slow down or change direction. Advanced composites such as carbon fibre/ honeycomb construction offer the key but as yet remain the domain of high end motorsport or very high end road car production due to the high material and labour intensive processing costs. As is often the case, it is likely that motosport developments will, enable such technology to trickle down into the mainstream of the motor industry. Racecar constructor, Juno Racing Cars are to collaborate with composite specialists EPM Technology in the project named "Affordable Structural Composites". The project aims to develop innovative manufacturing processes to make advanced composite structures a commercially viable choice for a new evolution of Juno's successful sports prototype racing car and also for a planned road legal trackday car. Whilst the project doesn't claim it will provide the solutions to enable advanced structural composites to be used in everyday car manufacture, it is expected to push the technology forward and provide information as to how the technology can be developed further such that it is soon a reality.