Abstract
Keywords:
Composite materials, Resin Infusion, Hybrid structures, Lightweight.
Abstract
The use of lightweight materials to achieve improved performance is known in the automotive industry for a long time. However, these materials have been, until recently, focused to the sports and high performance vehicles where weight was of paramount importance. The trend today is towards the use of these materials to common vehicles by developing new lower cost materials and production methods to take advantage of. Alongside, the requirements of the structural design task have been raised in order to couple the structural performance and the production method an overall optimal vehicle. The development of new resins and improved fabrics have boosted the liquid composite moulding to larger and heavy-loaded structures such as boats at an unbeatable quality and a reasonable budget. Though the extension of these new materials and methods to the vehicles structures and chassis is not straightforward where their main advantages over metallic structures: corrosion resistance and weight-to-volume are not so important. At the present paper a new approach has been used for the overall design of a composite trailer that will be manufactured using the vacuum infusion technique. The integration of various materials such as glass fibre fabrics, metal inserts and core materials held together using an appropriate resin (polyester or epoxy) is a challenge that needs considerable experience in similar designs. Moreover, the anisotropic behaviour of these materials brinks more freedom in the structure but requests higher accuracy in the analysis and in the definition of the potential loads. Naturally, the finite elements analysis tool is the choice but, still, many compromises are necessary. Similar tools can also be employed for the production simulation, as the trial-and-error procedure is more than time-consuming, expensive. Using shell elements the simulation of the fibres’ infusion with resin under vacuum can predict the potential pitfalls of the design of the structure and the process so a better overall design can be proposed.