General Competition (April 1992)

Cyclic Thermoplastic Liquid Composite Molding for Automotive Structures

Sponsor: Ford Motor Company, Scientific Research Labs

• Project Performance Period: 7/15/1992 - 12/31/1996
• Total project (est.): $10,799,629.00
• Requested ATP funds: $5,291,817.00

The development of cost-effective, light-weight materials, especially fiber-reinforced polymer composites, is one key to the competitiveness of the U.S. automotive industry in the next decade and beyond. Lightweight materials are required to meet demands for increased fuel efficiency. Liquid composite molding uses thermoset resins because their relatively low viscosity makes it easier to force the resin into the mold and thoroughly saturate the fiber preform, eliminating voids. These composites, however, have problems with product consistency, shelf-life of the ingredients, damage tolerance, crashworthiness, and recycling. Recently developed cyclic thermoplastics offer an attractive solution. Cyclic thermoplastics have the low viscosities required by the fabrication process, ingredients with long shelf-lives, and offer outstanding product consistency and toughness characteristics when compared to state-of-the-art thermosets. In addition, thermoplastics have inherent advantages for recycling because they can be remelted. This promising technology requires improved chemistries for low-cost synthesis of the prepolymer, new initiators (to trigger the polymerization process), better core materials with higher temperature resistance, new fabrication techniques, and detailed information on design issues such as crash-resistance and engineering properties. This joint venture brings together the Ford Motor Company, for automotive research, General Electric, a major materials supplier, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, supplier of glass fiber preform materials, American Leistritz, a composites molding equipment manufacturer, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for engineering studies, the University of Tulsa for recycling research, and ERIM to plan the transfer of cyclic thermoplastic molding technology to the parts fabricators who ultimately will use the technology.

For project information:

Pam Kueber, (313) 337-2456

Active Project Participants

• Cyclics Corporation (formerly GE Research; GE Corporate R&D) (Schenectady, NY)
  [Original, Active Member]
  

ATP Project Manager

H. Felix Wu, (301) 975-4685
felix.wu@nist.gov