The Manufacturing Process of Key Parts of the Car - Report Example

Name Tutors name Course Date Introduction Advancements in technology have played a big role in the modern day car manufacturing industry. However the indispensable thought of car body pressing and installations of parts on a vehicle as it goes through various stages remains more or less the same. This paper gives a detailed account of materials used in car body pressing. The first sections review the category of metallic equipment (steel, aluminum and magnesium) and other alloys and polymer composites used in car manufacturing industry. In the later section the characteristics and properties that a proper material should have and various treatment and test of materials are explained. Also addressed herein is the manufacturing process of key parts of the car. Automotive industry materials Lightweights The materials used in car manufacture need to meet certain requirements before being approved. Some of the requirements are due to legislation and regulation with safety as well as environmental distress and are what customers need. In most cases, a number of factors are contradictory and therefore an efficient design would only be achieved through an optimized and impartial decision (Ashby, 47). As more emphasis is put on improving fuel efficiency and green house gas reductions in the transportation segment, all car producers, assemblers, traders as well as producers of car spare parts are investing heavily in the Research and Development and commercialization of lightweight materials. All seem to have a common purpose of escalating the use of lightweight materials so as to acquire a large market share by producing automotive parts made from lightweight materials. Due to the fact that the major limitation in the application of lightweight materials is their unfriendly cost, mechanisms have been put in place to lessen costs through implementation of new manufacturing processes and forming expertise. Yet the reduction in weight is still the most efficient means to reduce greenhouse gases and fuel use within the transportation industry. It has been approximated that for every 5% of weight removed from a car’s total weight, fuel consumption improves by almost 4%. This implies that for each kilogram eliminated in a car’s total mass, there is almost 20kg of carbon dioxide diminution. Steel and aluminum To be able to construct and manufacture vehicles that are lighter without compromising rigidity, investigations have been conducted on the substitution of steel with aluminum, magnesium, foams and composites. The reuse and recovery of scrap metal from old vehicles, which entails very high resurgence goals, are compelling the car manufacturing sector to embrace lightweight materials expertise to meet these goals. Auto industry engineers are researching on the reduction in car’s weight in a way that is practicable economically. For instance, investigation by Lotus car manufacturing company indicates that a vehicle weight enhancement of 40% against a conservative typical vehicle can be realized at only 4% cost ( Lotus Eng. Co. ) Another study from Corus concludes that the major formation also called the Body In White (BIW), is generally made of steel bars and plates welded together to form a rigid and stronger frame. About 99% of all vehicles produced in the world are made this way. The remaining 0.9 % is usually made from aluminium BIW, while around 0.1 percent is made from carbon-fiber composite (Corus Automotive Eng). The physical properties of steel, (broad range of yield strength and high young’s modulus) combined with good workability and low cost have enabled vehicles constructed mainly from steel acquire the largest market share in the automotive industry. The BIW of a vehicle constitutes about 20% of the total weight. The weight occupied by doors, chassis, bonnet, driveline and boot bring the amount of steel to about 60 percent. The amount of steel and iron-related metal has reduced in the recent years due to replacement of iron with aluminium and magnesium for engine components. The amount of steel used in vehicle construction has also dropped, mainly due to: additional aluminium used in roof and chassis regions; higher levels of apparatus, tidiness and soundproofing; and increased use of plastics, especially below the bonnet (Defosse, 91). Magnesium Even though aluminium is lighter than steel, magnesium is 33% lighter than alumunium. Magnesium also has better corrosion resistance compared to conventional aluminium alloys. It also has higher impact strength due to its high elongation capacity. However, magnesium components have many physical property limitations that necessitate sophisticated design for application in car manufacturing industry. While its tensile yield strength almost equals that of aluminium, magnesium has lower fatigue strength and ultimate tensile strength. The hardness and modulus of magnesium alloys is lower than aluminum and its thermal expansion coefficient is higher. Nevertheless, despite these limitations associated with magnesium alloys, they have distinct advantages over aluminium which include longer die life, better workability and quicker solidification. Vehicle parts made from magnesium can be finished off with improved surface quality and dimensionality compared to aluminium. Early developments in improving magnesium’s creep properties were made by Volkswagen in the 1960s (Medraj and Parvez, 124). It was based on a magnesium alloy that exhibit slightly better creep resistance. Strength and hardness of magnesium can be improved by addition of alloying elements which can also have an effect on its chemical reactivity. Polymer composite Polymer composites were first used in the automotive industry in 1953 by Corvette. Advantages of these materials include low production costs and shortened lead times as compared to steel fabrication. In addition, composites reduce the total weight of vehicles and also offers design flexibility, material anisotropy and excellent corrosion resistance. However, despite these advantages, the use of polymer composite has been limited by recyclability, slow production rates and high material costs. Apart from that, there are concerns about absorption of crash energy, cost as well as competitive pressures and limited information on the use of composites in manufacture of cars. Safety crashworthiness Crashworthiness is the capacity to absorb impact energy so that it won’t have catastrophic effects to passengers. The two most important concepts to consider in an automotive industry are crashworthiness and penetration resistance. According to Kochan (254), penetration resistance is concerned with total absorption without allowing fragment penetration. The current designs in car body pressing necessitates that, in case of an accident of speeds up to 60 km/hr with a rigid stationary object, the passengers in that vehicle should not be victims of a resultant force. The emerging technologies in the automotive industry prefer the use of more and more polymer composites as opposed to metal parts in order to reduce the weight of the vehicles and improve fuel economy. However, most composites are more brittle as compared to metals that are more ductile and respond well to both compressive and tensile loads. While metal parts fracture under impact or crush by buckling in accordion type fashion, composites fracture via a series of mechanisms associated with matrix crazing and cracking, interplay separation and fibre fracture and disintegration. The actual sequence and mechanism of damage depends of the structure’s geometry, lamina orientation and crush speed, all of which can be considered during the design process to realize high energy absorbing mechanisms. Several factors are put into account during design for enhanced crashworthiness as well as the dimensional and geometrical facets which play major roles in different phases of collision. Nonetheless, the progressive failure behavior as well as materials deformation in terms of strain hardening, yield, stiffness, elongation and ultimate stress are also very vital in the energy absorption capacity of the vehicle (Witteman, 58). Thin-walled columns are fundamental sections in the model and design of Body In White. They play a crucial role as far as crashworthiness and entire safety of a vehicle is concerned because their plastic fracture and failure is the technique used to disperse a car’s kinetic energy in case of a crash. The plastic collapse technique should be reliable so that the expected magnitude of engrossed energy and the desired level of buckle load can be attained with minimal casualties. To determine characteristic values of a vehicle’s energy absorption, factors such as, structural effectiveness and load uniformity, weight specific energy absorption, crumpling of thin-walled columns and members of the front side are usually investigated. Geometry applied to members of the front side such as octagonal columns made from steel and closed-hat, light alloys and high-strength steel could be joined with more advanced methods like press-joining, structural adhesive and spot-welding. Crashworthiness tests To determine crashworthiness, vehicles are rated as good, acceptable, trivial or poor depending on performance in high speed overturn assessment, front and side crash tests as well as assessments of safety belts for protection against injuries in case of a crash. A vehicle must also offer electronic stability control. Modern vehicles are constructed to be safer in case of a crash than they used to be, thanks to technology. Still, many lives are lost on UK roads as a result of passenger vehicle crashes. About 50% of the deaths are due to frontal crashes. Recently, new programs were put into place to compare frontal crashworthiness among passenger vehicles. These programs have assisted a great deal in furnishing buyers with relevant crashworthiness information. As more safety is achieved in frontal crashes, the necessity of safety from side impacts also comes into play. Given the designs of modern vehicles, it is improbable that passengers in severe collisions would come out uninjured. However, with efficient side impact protection, passengers should survive severe accidents with minor injuries. Side impact crash tests are conducted across the model of the vehicle and weight groupings while front crash tests are conducted only within a particular weight category. According to Abernathy (82), rollover tests examine strength of the roof of the vehicle for protection in overturn collisions. To check the strength of the roof, a metal plate is pushed against one corner of the roof of the vehicle. A strength-to-weight ratio is then determined by comparing the maximum force contained by the roof prior to 5 inches of crash with the total weight of the vehicle. This is recommended for estimation of vehicle structural fortification in any crash. Other tests on vehicle’s safety rear crash protection which focuses on how safe the seat/head restraint combination is in case of a crash. The most vital aspect for a helpful head restraint is its design. A head restraint needs to be behind and close to the back of a passenger’s head to avoid him/her from serious head injuries in a rear-end crash. Electronic stability control also offers significant protection as it reduces collision risk, principally the risk of severe single-vehicle accidents; by assisting drivers manage their cars through emergency. Materials joining and inspection State of the art know-how for fusion composites to each other and to metal structure in car manufacturing industry is being developed. Current technologies focus much on formulation of adhesive, modeling and processing. More research is being conducted on the improvement of non-adhesive fusion procedures such as the bonding of carbon fibre based composites to metals and chemical bonding of thermoset composites (Automotive Composites Alliance) A major limitation of in the use of composites in car body pressing is that there are no technologies for lucrative reprocess and refurbish of sophisticated composite materials. Efforts are underway for unraveling glass and carbon fibre from thermoplastic resin and thermoset systems. The affordable lightweight ordinary fibers offer the possibility to substitute a bulky quantity of the mineral and glass fillers in a number of vehicle’s exterior and interior parts. Most automotive industries in Europe embraced common-fiber composites with thermoset and thermoplastic matrices for seat backs, door panels, package trays, headliners, and interior parts during the last decade. Natural fibres such as flax, hemp, kenaf, sisal and jute are playing vital roles in car manufacture due to such factors as cost-effectiveness, reduction in weight and carbon dioxide emission, recyclability, less dependence on unfamiliar oil sources and not forgetting that the fibres are eco-friendly. Due to this, most modern car manufacturers are assessing the environmental impact of the entire lifecycle of a vehicle from raw materials to construction to discarding. Glass-fibre-strengthened plastics have shown good trends as far as structural and durability demands are concerned. Integration of well established manufacturing base and good mechanical properties has facilitated the inclusion of fiberglass-strengthened plastics within the car manufacturing industry. Nonetheless, glass-reinforced plastics have disadvantages which include poor machining and recycling properties as well as prospective health perils posed by glass-fibre particulate (Lamming, 261) Conclusion With the advent of global warming and climate change, the environmental apprehension has opened the necessity for lighter vehicles for lower emission of greenhouse gases and fuel consumption. This has necessitated the introduction of new materials in the automobile industry to be used in car body pressing. Some of these new materials include composites and alternative metals other than steel and cast iron. Nevertheless, there are yet major limitations in use of these materials in bulk primarily due to recyclability and cost of raw materials. Therefore, more research needs to be conducted on appropriate processes, properties as well as lower cost materials in this worthwhile sector to facilitate production of lighter and more eco-friendly vehicles. Works cited Abernathy, William. The Productivity Dilemma: Roadblock to Innovation in the Automobile Absorption for Different Collision Situations. Eindhoven University of Technology, 1999 Anna, Kochan. Laser technology is key to new VW Golf -- Streamlining in body shop cuts Automotive Composites Alliance (ACA). 2000 Model Year Passenger Car and Truck Thermoset Composite Components. Troy, MI., 2000 Corus Eng. Co., The multimaterial - The multi-material car.htm, 2010 Geoffrey, Davies. Magnesium Materials for automotive bodies. Elsevier, G. London, pp 91, Hounshell, David. From the American System to Mass Production. Johns Hopkins University Industry. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978 Lamming, Richard. Beyond Partnership: Strategies for Innovation & Lean Supply. Prentice Hall, Lotus engineering, co. An Assessment of Mass Reduction Opportunities for a 2017 –2020 Mamoun Medraj and Anwar Parvez. Analyse the importance of Magnesium- aluminium- Mathew Defosse. Ford, GM move to composite truck beds. 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