Abstract
CFK lightweight components in Steering Columns
Lightweight construction in the automotive sector is pushed by the governments and laws of the leading industrial nations regarding climate protection and CO2 reduction. So the European Committee decide to regulate the overall fuel consumption of the car makers with limits of 130 g CO2/km in 2012 for each new passenger cars. The carmaker and the buyer have to pay an additional „tax” for each gram CO2 if the limit is not reached. With the year 2020 the limit will be reduce to 90 g CO2/km. Therefor fuel reduction and lightweight design lead to new cars concepts like different kind of hybrid concepts, hydrogen fuel cell, E-cars, etc.
The first paper were examine an introduction to fibre-reinforced composites (FRC), as well as were shown the first results of carbon fibre components (CFK) in steering column design that runs in origin in high volume production. Furthermore, it was an introduction to fundamentals in fibre-reinforced composites, their materials and properties as well as the basics in steering columns and its components.
In this work the steering column of a series-high-speed sports car, whose name will not be published, designed as a lightweight steering column. There is especially the column jacket, which is due to its complexity and predetermined interfaces, a Challenger higher than the two components examined in Part 1. It was studied glass and carbon fibers as well as sandwich materials.
An important development target is to increase the natural frequency of the entire steering column in addition to weight reduction. The weight reduction potential is up to 50 percent regarding steel and 20-30 percent regarding aluminium. CFK is nowadays used in all kind of sport cars with low production volumes. Steering columns are safety components and need to fulfil special quality issues, life time durability requirements (e.g. under temperature profile) and crash performance.
Keywords: Automotive Industry, Lightweight design, CFK, CO2 Emission, Electro- Mobility