Abstract
With the ever growing usage of plastics in automobile industry to meet the stringent regulations of improving the fuel efficiency in automobiles, more emphasis is being given for the weight reduction of auto components. Though various technologies are already available in the industry to reduce the weight of the plastic components, advances in the polypropylene manufacturing technology and compounding technology has enabled polypropylene compounds to compete with engineering plastics viz., polyamides, where heat property is not a requirement. This work is focused on high performance polypropylene glass reinforced compounds to replace glass reinforced polyamide compounds. It has been shown in this study that 30% GF reinforced Nylon-6 can be replaced by high performance 40%GF PP compound where no compromise on any of the mechanical properties are ensured and at the same time achieving a weight reduction of ~10%. It has been shown in this study that part level testing of injection molded components made out of HP PPGF compounds successfully fulfills the performance requirements in the vehicle testing. More importantly it has been demonstrated in this study that existing tool designed for glass filled Nylon-6 can be used without any modification for moulding HP PPGF material.