Car Body Pressing - Essay Example

Name Tutors name Course Date Introduction The developments of car bodies have evolved over a long period of time. For more than 100 years, different methods have been used to build the bodies. In early development stages, the bodies were made by hand using hammers and English wheels and it was attached to wooden frames so as to produce the shape. The problem with the early method was that it consumes a lot of time and hard to perform it. The press method was there since 1860 but it was not used initially because it was a bit complex. This article provides details on the materials used in building car bodies and how pressing is carried out. The first sections review the category of metallic equipment and other alloys and polymer composites used in car manufacturing industry; the other section deal with the characteristics and properties that a proper material should have and various treatment and test of materials. The main types of materials that are used in car industries are iron, aluminum, plastic steel, glass, steel, and many others. The materials have been evolving over centuries and it has become more sophisticated and safe. The materials have been changing because better manufacturing technologies have been developed and they are applied in a more innovative way. Steel is a very important metal used in building car bodies and other parts. The metal has evolved over time and different forms of steel can now be manufactured to fit different parts of the vehicles. Steel is a very strong metal, cheap, and working with it is easy. Producing it is a bit easy because it does not require any kind of specialized equipments or tools to manufacture and repair, so it is considered the cheapest and readily available method for building car bodies. The amount of steel used in vehicle construction has recently dropped mainly due to: additional aluminum used in roof and chassis regions; higher levels of apparatus, tidiness and soundproofing; and increased use of plastics, especially below the bonnet. During the processing of steel, the liquid steel are cast into huge bars known as ingnots. The ingnots are then rolled and pressed to give the final product. The final product is then worked on to give the type of steel that is required. The shaping process involves hot rolling and pressing. When making car bodies, steel are treated with other metals such as tins through the process of electrolysis. To become resistant to weather, they are galvanized with zinc through dipping into hot liquid zinc so as to have an overall protection. The second most important material is aluminum. Many cars industries now prefer aluminum because it is lighter and stronger that steel, it is also susceptible to rust. The problem with aluminum is that it is expensive and complex to work on unlike steel that means it is normally used only on expensive cars. Joining aluminum is a challenge to in building of car bodies. Welding alone seems not to be the best method. Spot welding is the main method used to join metals in welding industries, but when it comes to aluminum riveting is better than welding. The use of aluminum increased from 5 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2009. Lighter weight from aluminum means a boost in car performance. It gives a good class-A surface quality making more attractive to car users. The metal also has ability to control energy absorption making it important in proving resistant dents and protecting passengers when there is a collision. Aluminum has a natural impermeable aluminum oxide coating that prevent any form of oxidation, and this kind of resistance can be reinforced using coating, painting or treatments. After being used, the old materials can be recycled making it environment friendly. Aluminum finishes are produced using coil coating process. Coil coating is a process in which aluminum substrate degreased, pre-treated, and coated. The paint is applied to the surface through rolls. Pre-treatment involves chemicals being used to clean and remove oxides, similar to when lubricants are being used to remove dirt; the process end by adding conversion layer on aluminum strip. The body is the cured with high temperatures of up to 200 to 300 degrees. For environmental protection, the vapor is used to heat the oven in an enclosed space to ensure that gases will not escape from to space. Fiberglass is another material used in the manufacture of car bodies. It is made by embedding small strands of glass in a mat then spreading it in a plastic. The combination of the two materials glass and plastic means that resulting material is a light, fairly strong, and it cannot bend. Following the emergence of light metals like aluminum, their popularity has gone down and its use has decreased tremendously. This is associated with their weakness compared to metals and complexity of repairing has made it unpopular. The last important material used in building car bodies is carbon. The most commonly used is carbon fibre. It is a strong material and it is very light. It weight less that steel and five times stronger than steel making it attractive. When car bodies are replaced with carbon fiber, it becomes more economical because light cars tend to consume less fuel which means greenhouse emission will be cut by about 20 percent. Unlike the metals when the car has been disposed, the body can be melted and reused to construct another body. However, carbon fibre material cannot be recycled. If recycled the recycled material is weak and it cannot be used again to build another body. In building car bodies, pressing is one process applied during the building of car bodies. This is a process in which a flat metal is sandwiched between convex and concave dies. High pressure is the applied to the material in order to shape or cut it. Car bodies pressing are in two forms, stand alone and transfer presses that group several dies in one press. Transfer presses has been found to be improving productivity by transferring the panel automatically between the dies put together in the machine, of late the method has become the main form of producing car bodies in Japan. The most important thing to effective running of mechanical pressing process is through using tremendous force with a lot of delicacy. The material being manufactured is placed into the dies with accuracy and a lot of force is applied to it, it is normally referred to as the tonnage of press. If the force applied is wrong, the panels will get crack or split. Some metals require multiple pressing to rich its final state as a finished product. In the process of pressing, there is a possibility of errors being introduced in the panel. One of the concerns in the process is contamination. Over a long period of time, pressing has been done by use of hydraulic or flywheel pressers. In flywheel pressing, the energy is transferred from the wheel to a connecting rod that will move the dies up and down in the process. The process operates at inherently the same speed. The ability of a vehicle to absorb impact energy so as to keep passengers safe is called crashworthiness. In manufacture of vehicles, the two important things that are considered are crashworthiness and penetration resistance. According to engineers, penetration resistance is concerned with total absorption of shock totally without allowing any form of penetration. The vehicles bodies are designed in such a way that in case of an accident whether rolling or collision, the passengers will not get injured. The current emerging technology in car industries prefers the use of polymer composite materials instead of metal in building the vehicle body. But composite materials are disadvantages as compared to metals because composite metals are brittle and can break easily unlike metal materials because they are ductile and respond well to compressive and tensile force. When designing a car body, several important factors are put in place so as to enhance crashworthiness as well as dimension and geographical factors that plays a crucial role during accidents. However, the failure of materials in terms of strain hardening stiffness or elongation is also significant in the absorption of shock during collision. 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 determine the worthiness of the body if the car crashes, the car bodies are rated as good, acceptable or poor depending on how it performance in case of a car crash. Modern technology has help in construction of vehicles that are safer. Though still many lives are lost through accidents especially in developing countries, a lot of this is not associated with the way a vehicle is built and it is so much associated with careless driving. Research has been put forward to compare crashworthiness among different vehicles. The research information have assisted car builders in coming up with better vehicles that in case of a crash, there will be minimum loss of life. This has also encouraged the use of aluminum in building car bodies because the metal has been found to absorb shock and a crush will not be vital. With better safety being achieved because of new innovation, the necessity of safety from car bodies has come into play. From the way the modern vehicles are designed, it is not proper to say that after the crash the passengers will come out uninjured. But with proper side impact protection, the people inside the car will survive fatal accidents with little injuries. Side impact crashes are tested according to the model of the vehicle and the type of material used to build the car body. Front crashes are conducted according to certain weight category. To test the strength of the roof of the vehicle, roll over test are carried out on the vehicle in case of an accident and the vehicle rolls. To check the strength of the body roof, a plate is pushed against one corner of the body roof. 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 will provide the strength of the roof and it will provide the insight of improving the body roof of the vehicle. The current car technologies on joining different parts has improved and current research is focusing on improvement of non-adhesive fusion procedures like bonding of carbon fibre based composites to metals and chemical bonding of thermoset composites. What limits the use of composite in car pressing is lack of technology for refurbishing composite materials. Light weight normal glass is offering an alternative to carbon fibre and other forms of materials that are used to build body cars. Manufactures are currently assessing the environmental impact of the entire lifespan of the car ranging from the materials used to build, to construction, and discarding. In conclusion, the development of car bodies over a long period of time has made it better than it was before. The main types of materials that are used in car industries are iron, aluminum, plastic steel, glass, steel, and many others. The materials have been evolving over centuries and it has become more sophisticated and safe. The materials have been changing because better manufacturing technologies have been developed and they are applied in a more innovative way. Steel is a very important metal used in building car bodies and other parts. It is a very strong metal, cheap, and working with it is easy. Aluminum is preferred because it is lighter and stronger that steel, it is also susceptible to rust. The problem with aluminum is that it is expensive and complex to work on unlike steel that means it is normally used only on expensive cars. Carbon fibre is a strong material and it is very light. It weight less that steel and five times stronger than steel making it attractive. In building car bodies, pressing is one process applied during the building of car bodies. This is a process in which a flat metal is sandwiched between convex and concave dies. References Anthony, Bianculli. Trains and Technology: Cars. University of Delaware Press, 2002 Donald, Askeland and Pradeep, Fulay. The Science & Engineering of Materials. Cengage Learning, 2005 Burrill, Daniel, and Jeffrey Zurschmeide. How to Fabricate Automotive Fiberglass & Carbon Fiber Parts. North Branch: CarTech Inc, 2012. Internet resource. Hargitai, Hajnalka, and Ilona Rácz. "Applications of Macro and Microfiller-Reinforced Polymer Composites." (2012): 747-790. Print. 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 Lotus engineering, co. An Assessment of Mass Reduction Opportunities for a 2017 –2020 Mamoun Medraj and Anwar Parvez. 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