Abstract
Car Makers and Suppliers are actively working to introduce technological innovations on one hand to answer to the pressing request of consumption and emission reductions and on the other to satisfy the new market demands.
The new technologies will improve the powertrain system efficiency strategies, vehicle architectural solutions and a good compromise between lightening (mass reduction) and manufacturing cost of components.
In particular for lightening aspects will be necessary to adopt non conventional material
(Aluminum Alloy, Magnesium Alloy, Composites) and suitable manufacturing processes. Concerning metals alloys, casting process offers the advantage to integrate, in a single component, several traditionally assembled parts.
As a contribution to currently ongoing projects aimed to reach a cost effective vehicle weight reduction, a series of results of experimental activities, carried out to determine material fatigue data (related both to manufacturing process and to service environment) of automotive casting components to be used at the co-design stage, has been analysed and discussed with examples related to main structural components of the vehicle.