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New idea! Teijin Group adopts a multi-material solution to make bus roofs!
Toho Tenax, the core company of the Teijin Group's carbon fiber and composites business, announced today that it has developed a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP), which is a lightweight material for fuel cell buses made of aluminum and other lightweight materials. High-quality multi-layer engineering plastics for roof covers. A roof cover with a visually attractive surface can be manufactured as a large piece with a complex shape and is suitable for mass production. The roof cover adopts the world's first mass-produced fuel cell buses developed by Toyota Motor Corporation. A variety of material solutions are selected for the roof cover of hydrogen fuel cell buses, including engineering plastics and CFRP. Facing the ever-improving global environmental protection laws, the automotive industry is developing lightweight bodies to improve fuel efficiency while maintaining road stability. Since buses carry high-pressure hydrogen tanks in their superstructures, the lightweight body parts on the top of the vehicle are crucial. Toho Tenax cooperated with GH Craft Ltd., a composite material structure design, development and evaluation unit of Teijin Group, to develop a multi-material roof using Toho Tenax's high-performance carbon fiber and mass production technology and GH Craft's molding technology. As a global leader in the field of automotive lightweight composite materials technology, Continental Automotive Structural Plastics Holdings (CSP) joined the Teijin Group in January 2017 as a first-tier supplier and solution provider for multi-material components and designs, and promotes its Global development capabilities. Based on the selection of a variety of material roof coverings for Toyota fuel cell buses, the Teijin Group is looking forward to speeding up related internal cooperation and strengthening its position as a Tier 1 supplier of automobile manufacturers. Thermoplastic carbon fiber composite material is expected to contribute to the popularization of a new generation of environmentally friendly vehicles. Countries around Europe are tightening restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, and this trend is expected to spread throughout the world in the future. Therefore, for automobile manufacturers, technological innovations such as weight reduction and the popularization of electric vehicles to reduce carbon dioxide emissions have become an important issue in the future. In the context of the strengthening of carbon dioxide emissions restrictions, the Teijin Group predicts that the new generation of environmentally friendly vehicles such as electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles will be further popularized, and the demand for carbon fiber composite materials (CFRP), which is an alternative to iron and other metals, will further increase. Carbon fiber, an environmentally friendly material that is easy to mass-produce and recycle, is a light-weight high-performance fiber with strength 10 times that of ferrous metal and only one-fourth of its weight. Among them, CFRP, as a composite material of carbon fiber and plastic resin, has the advantages of being resistant to deformation and acid and alkali. Recently, as a material in the automotive field, it has attracted attention in promoting energy conservation and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Conventional CFRP uses a thermosetting resin that hardens when heated, and it takes several minutes to several hours to form, so it is not suitable for mass production of automobiles. In response to this situation, the Teijin Group used thermoplastic resins that soften when heated and harden when cooled when molding CFRP, which greatly shortened the molding time. It is also the world's first to establish CFRP within 1 minute. Formed mass production technology. As a result, mass production is possible, and the production efficiency is improved. In addition, the shape of the formed product can be changed, thereby increasing the possibility of product recycling through repeated use and reshaping. The CFRP concept car using Teijin technology In early 2011, through the use of newly developed intermediate materials, forming technology and joining technology, a concept car with a body frame of all thermoplastic CFRP was produced. The body frame weight is 47kg, which is the same as the previous iron body frame. In comparison, the weight is reduced by about one-fifth. The article comes from the website of plasticstoday, the original title is Multi-material solution adopted for bus roof cover, which is summarized and compiled by Material Technology Online.
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