Glass-mat thermoplastic enables award-winning beam

A composite pedestrian beam moulded from glass-mat thermoplastic has been named as most innovative use of plastics by the Society of Plastics Engineers International.

At its 35th-annual Innovation Awards Gala, the Automotive Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers International (SPE) awarded a composite pedestrian beam moulded from glass-mat thermoplastic (GMT) with a first-place finish for the most innovative use of plastics in the group's new safety category.

Featured on vehicles from Volkswagen, the beam helps improve the safety of pedestrians, considered in the European Union to be the most threatened road users.

The award was accepted by representatives from the OEM, Volkswagen, Tier One supplier and moulder, Aksys, and materials supplier, Quadrant Plastic Composites.

Enhanced pedestrian protection is a high priority in the European Union (EU), where pedestrian deaths account for 20% of all road casualties and about 290,000 injuries per year.

Children under the age of 12 incur the highest number of these deaths and serious injuries.

To help reduce fatalities and serious injuries among the most vulnerable road users, the automotive industry in Europe has voluntarily adopted a set of proactive requirements to add pedestrian protection to the front of their vehicles.

The pedestrian protection beam is conceived as one way of reducing lower leg and knee trauma during first contact with the vehicle's front end.

As would be expected, different OEMs and their suppliers are approaching this voluntary obligation by designing pedestrian protection beams in different ways in order to fit existing vehicle designs without adversely affecting vehicle balance and weight.

In the case of Volkswagen and Aksys, a number of profile designs and material combinations were evaluated.

The goal of each combination was to add stiffness by mounting an extra carrier below the existing bumper beam and reducing weight and costs of existing metal solutions.

The team finally settled on a high-performance GMTex textile-reinforced glass-mat thermoplastic (GMT) composite from Quadrant Plastic Composites.

The advantages offered by the GMT/GMTex composite compared with other design/material combinations in the pedestrian beam include: excellent performance for increased road safety and reduced pedestrian injury or death; integration into existing vehicle designs allowing for a small offset geometry/package space and lower spoiler geometry, while maintaining existing hood, grill, and headlamp position/angles; significant reductions in part and investment costs compared with steel designs - 50% weight reduction for better fuel economy and lower operating costs, 40% reduction in tooling costs, 50% lower materials costs compared with steel with ribs; and better recycling performance compared with metal/nylon-glass hybrids.

These materials provided excellent stiffness and toughness and consistent performance in the operating temperature range of -40 to +80C for this application while reducing mass and costs.

The ability during blank manufacture and during compression moulding to tune the mechanical properties of GMT/GMTex composites by varying the type, quantity, orientation, and order of layers of chopped and continuous glass fibres, and woven and nonwoven fabrics gives designers a high degree of design freedom rarely found in other material/process combinations.

Compression moulding also is capable of producing complex geometries in variable part thicknesses quickly on an automated process with short cycle times to meet the needs of medium- and high-volume vehicle builds.

Volkswagen has already adopted the GMT composite pedestrian beam on many of its models, including: Bora (100,000 annual build); Golf GTI (46,000 annual build); and Golf Plus (220,000 annual build).

And even more VW models will have the composite pedestrian protection beam from 2006 on.

Additionally, the Mercedes S-Class vehicle from DaimlerChrysler (70,000 annual build) also uses a GMT pedestrian beam.

This design combines an engine shield with the pedestrian beam.

A two-piece system is used in the EU whereas a one-piece design is used in North America.

Many of these vehicles are considered medium- and high-volume builds, yet the compression moulding process has no trouble keeping pace with assembly, producing an average of 6 parts per minute in family tooling.

This is the first year that SPE has had a safety category in its Innovation Awards competition.

The long-standing SPE Innovation Awards programme is affectionately referred to as the "Academy awards of the plastics industry", and is considered the premier recognition event in the automotive and plastics industries.

This is the third year in a row that global-supplier Quadrant has received top honours at the Innovation Awards event for one of its applications.

Last year, the composite supplier was honoured along with Tier 1, Faurecia, and moulders FPK, a 50/50 joint venture with Aksys and the Spanish Mondragon Group, Faurecia moulding Division of France, and Nishikawa of Japan for a hybrid GMT/metal instrument panel carrier used with six IP designs on 12 vehicles sold worldwide by Ford, Volvo and Mazda.

Two years ago, Quadrant was honoured along with Seeber and BMW for underbody shields made from Symalite, a new lightweight reinforced thermoplastic (LWRT) composite.

Quadrant has also supplied materials for applications that have won awards in Europe and Asia in recent years.

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