Automobile Bumpers

Abstract

Automobile bumper is a most important part in the aspect of safety, which protects the passengers from front and rear collision. Initially, metals were used as bumper to avoid the collision. In this modern era, the development of polymer and its composite plays an effective role in reducing the weight without sacrificing the functionality. However, the awareness of the available light weight polymer materials was not explored successfully by the industries. Hence, an attempt was made to carry out the systematic review on automobile bumper and its materials. Polypropylene (PP) is one of the widely used polymers in developing various automobile parts including automobile bumpers. The required mechanical properties of bumpers were not achieved successfully with the PP. Hence, the different concentration of various micro and nano fillers such as Multi walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), Single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT), carbon black, glass fiber, carbon fiber, nanoclay, etc., were reinforced with PP to achieve the sufficient mechanical properties. One of our study shows that the reinforcement of 1.5wt% of MWCNT enhanced the mechanical properties significantly, where the tensile strength, flexural strength, flexural modulus, and Young׳s modulus was found to be enhanced by 42.8, 33.7, 17.4, and 16%, respectively compared to pure PP. It was observed that various fillers were used with PP matrix to achieve the required mechanical properties, however the optimum filler concentration is still a concern. It is concluded that more research should be carried out to avoid the muddle in choosing filler and reinforcement concentration before practical usage.