Abstract
Lightweighting is one of the key solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of vehicles. Nowadays, it is still challenging to achieve this target because there is a conflict between the cost and final material performance, as well as the fact that many lightweight solutions are restricted to laboratory or small-scale production. In this work, a commercially feasible strategy was adopted to fabricate materials for lightweight applications. Hollow glass bubbles, jute fibres, and rubber powder were used as fillers with polypropylene as the base polymer. Various samples were fabricated using conventional and MuCell® injection moulding. Their performance was then characterised by their density and morphological, mechanical, and rheological properties. A comparison among hybrid fillers/polypropylene compounds with and without MuCell® technology was investigated. The filler hybridisation resulted in not only a density reduction of up to approximately 10%, but also improved tensile/flexural modulus and strength. The use of MuCell® led to a further reduction in density of roughly 10%. Meanwhile, although some compounds fabricated by MuCell® exhibited some deterioration in their tensile yield strength, tensile modulus, and impact strength, they maintained acceptable mechanical properties for automotive applications.
Highlights
Vehicle lightweighting has become one of the essential tasks in order to reduce fuel consumption, and to reduce CO2 emissions in view of EU legislation establishing a lower CO2 emission target for vehicles manufactured after 2020 [1,2]
This content is recommended in [28], where a maximum cell density was obtained at an SCF-N2 level of 0.7 wt% for a carbon fibre/polypropylene composite foam
There were processing difficulties when using MuCell® to fabricate GB3 and JUTE3, which contained the largest percentage of hollow glass bubbles and jute fibres
Summary
Vehicle lightweighting has become one of the essential tasks in order to reduce fuel consumption, and to reduce CO2 emissions in view of EU legislation establishing a lower CO2 emission target for vehicles manufactured after 2020 [1,2]. Polypropylene is one of the most commonly used polymers for automotive components Fillers such as talc [8,9] and glass fibres [10,11] are often compounded with virgin polymers for reinforcement and economic considerations at a typical loading of 10–25 wt%. Compared to silica-based glass fibres, plant-derived natural fibres, such as jute [16,17,18] and hemp [19], are attracting increasing attention as reinforcing fillers due to their biodegradability and sustainability Their specific density is approximately half of that of glass fibres [20,21] and they are generally less brittle, allowing them to maintain their high aspect ratio during processing [10]. Samples fabricated from conventional and MuCell® injection moulding were compared, showing that MuCell® leads to a further weight reduction with some deterioration in tensile yield strength, tensile modulus, and impact strength whilst the flexural strength and modulus are maintained
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