U.S. Promulgates Plans for Automotive Plastics Plans

The newly announced automotive plastics blueprint for the Plastics Division of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) stated that the ability to display more plastics and polymer composites is needed to expand the use of these materials in automotive applications.

The organization released its first automotive plastic blueprint in 2001. The latest update was in 2009. The latest version, entitled "Blueprint for Automotive Plastics and Polymer Composites Technology", aims to build a framework to increase the penetration of plastics and polymer composites in the automotive industry, with special emphasis on weight reduction applications and achieving fuel efficiency standards .

According to the CAFE standard set by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Environmental Protection Agency, car manufacturers need to achieve a fuel efficiency of more than 50 mpg by 2025. The blueprint states that automakers are increasingly considering the use of plastic as a lightweight alternative to traditional materials. For example, carbon fiber reinforced composites are 50% lighter than traditional steel and 30% lighter than aluminum.

ACC’s automotive team leader Matthew Marks said in a telephone interview with Plastics News that car manufacturers are under pressure to meet standards. Plastics and composites will play an even more important role with their superior strength to weight ratio and hardness to weight ratio. Marks said that during the 20 years of his career, he has witnessed the doubling of the use of automotive plastics, but there are still some challenges for plastics to fully realize their potential.

The blueprint states that automotive infrastructure and manufacturing workers have adapted to metal materials over the past 100 years, impeding plastics and polymer composites.

The blueprint calls for enhanced display of plastics and polymer composites capabilities in the supply chain while taking steps to improve the plastic-related information system.

Marks said that an important part of this is to display in the entire industry, find related application areas and projects, and work closely with the supply chain, whether it is all levels of suppliers or OEM, show engineers can provide what based on plastic and composite materials Lightweight material. Another area is material selection and component design. To show engineers what they can do with lightweight materials, to demonstrate the low specific gravity, high strength, and high hardness of polymer composites that can replace traditional materials.

In addition to enhancing display and practitioner development, Marks also mentioned that it is necessary to strengthen the knowledge base of plastics and provide more plastics and polymer education courses at the college level.

The blueprint also mentions the challenge that people think plastics and polymer composites are not "high-grade" materials. Marks said developing better design tools for plastics and polymer materials will help change this view while shortening the development time required for plastics and polymer composites to become more attractive alternatives.

Marks said that although there are still problems with multiple materials and assembly, plastics and polymer composites have obvious advantages in terms of integrating parts and significantly reducing weight, and some traditional materials end up being difficult and costly to regenerate.

For example, Marks said, for example, an injection molded plastic part developed specifically for the Ford Taurus front-end module reduced the weight by 46%. He said that integrating parts through the injection molding process eliminates unnecessary parts in the production process. This reduces costs and also reduces weight.