JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #111 - March 2017 - Special JEC World - 40

MANUFACTURlNG integrated process

Hybridisation - A toolbox for efficient
lightweight production

DR.-ING. KAI FISCHER, Director of Science Institute of
Plastics Processing, RWTH Aachen (IKV)
Director Production Technology, Aachen Center
for integrative Lightweight Production,
RWTH Aachen (AZL)
DR.-ING. MICHAEL EMONTS, CEO, Aachen Center
for integrative Lightweight Production,
RWTH Aachen (AZL)
Division Chief Engineer, Production Machines,
Fraunhofer IPT Aachen

he use of structural composites
is emerging in mass applications,
with resource efficiency during
operation being the main driver for
this trend. Within the past years, two
important developments could be observed in this field.
Due to the automotive industry's
growing demand for cost-competitive
weight reductions through the use of
composites, the composite and plastics
communities have intisified cooperation. This opened synergies between
the high weight-saving potential of
continuous fibre-reinforced structures
and the cost-driven, highly industrialised plastics processing in the field of
thermoplastics as well as polyurethane
moulding with or without reinforcement fibres. This led to achievements
that demonstrated, that the mass-production of high-performance composite parts is a technologically-feasible
and economic solution for serial cars.
The BMW Group's activities, with the
i3 and i8 models, are for sure the initial drivers for these developments, focusing on thermoset composites based

At RWTH Aachen University, a consortium of 9 institutes with 750
scientists is cooperating since many decades on interdisciplinary research for mass-production of composites. Hybridisation has always
been an important topic, which can be only addressed holistically by
gathering expertise in materials science and production technology.
Beyond functional integration, hybridisation offers huge opportunities
regarding individualized and performance controlled mass-production.
on textile preforming processes with a
low level of functional integration. The
construction of the i3 and i8 cars is hybridised as parts made of various materials are joined during assembly to the
product by mechanical and adhesive
bonding.
Another important development was
the transition of the back-moulding
of continuous fibre-reinforced thermoplastic sheets using thermoplastic
injection moulding compounds from
the status of a "proof of principle" to
an industrialised process with the first
serial applications in the market. The
idea of integrating processes and different types of materials involves high po-

tential for cost-reduction due to functional integration. Typical functions
to be integrated are ribs, frames for
defined fringes or mounting elements.
This technology was adapted from developments conducted in the 1990s,
where the first hybrid parts made by
metal sheet forming and subsequent
functionalisation by injection moulding were demonstrated in applications,
for example a serial front-end from the
Ford Motor Company. The new aspect
of hybrid technology is the integration
of thermoplastic sheet forming and injection moulding into a single process.
So it is not a subsequent joining step,
but the integrated manufacturing of a

Fig. 1: Selective laser processing as an enabler for hybrid thermoset/thermoplastic composites (AZL)

jec composites magazine / No111 March 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #111 - March 2017 - Special JEC World