Abstract
Since the beginning of its history, company ATR GROUP has been involved in most challenging composite applications for automotive and motorsport industry, the most popular projects being those related to chassis. Looking back at those projects, many top managers and engineers recognize most of them as real milestones of recent automotive technology history for high performance cars. Not to mention all of them, Ferrari F50 and Porsche Carrera GT chassis represent start and current point in timeline terms. Even though from early eighties up to now many developments have been made in the manufacturing processes, all the ATR projects share at least two special topics that make them noticeable among all their direct competitors in composite industry. First topic is related to product performances, dimensional stability, aesthetical appearance, highly shaped geometry allowed for design optimization, low labour consumption and low rate of tooling investment. For all these values to be outstanding, ATR always manufactured chassis with integral CFRP structure, this structure being moulded integrally in one autoclave shot. No bonded joints between parts are detectable on the final part, thus chassis are free of points weaker than base material. Second topic is industry related, since nowadays ATR represents one of the biggest production capability installed within composite industry and fully dedicated to automotive applications. So far there is no word about programs running elsewhere at more than four complete composite chassis and bodyworks per day. Present work is dedicated to automotive industry and aims to extend ATR Composite Space Frame Technology to future projects with higher production rates demand.
Keywords:carbon fiber, technology, GT cars, frame, design, composite chassis, performance