Press Release

USCAR Announces Composite Structure Meets U.S. Crash Safety Standards

12/09/96

USCAR Successfully Crashes Composite Structure

DEARBORN, Mich., Dec. 5 -- The American automakers
reached a milestone in developing advanced, environmental technology
by meeting government crash-safety standards with a lightweight,
composite front-end structure designed for mass production.

The test was performed by the U.S. Council for Automotive Research
(USCAR), which manages collaborative research of Chrysler Corp., Ford
Motor Co.  and General Motors Corp. Through USCAR, the automakers hope
to leverage their strengths, speed technical development and better
respond to environmental and societal issues.

The accomplishment marks the first time the government safety criteria
for a 35 mile-per-hour frontal barrier crash test were met with a
production-feasible composite design. The composite parts weigh 25
percent less than the steel parts they replaced on the test vehicle.

"Working together, we were able to develop state-of-the-art technology
suggesting composites can be designed to function in crashes as well
as traditional steel," said Mark Botkin, USCAR's Automotive Composites
Consortium's (ACC) project leader and GM principal research engineer.

"Individually, it probably would have taken us three times as long to
reach this milestone," adds Richard Jeryan, Ford technical specialist.

Composite material is both strong and lightweight, making it an
attractive option for building vehicles that could reduce emissions
and require less gasoline.  However, the raw material is expensive and
efficient manufacturing methods need to be developed.

The test vehicle's front end performed as USCAR engineers expected in
a "controlled crush," explained Botkin, while traditional metals
buckle and fold in a crash, structural composites -- made of polymers
reinforced with glass fibers -- fracture and crumble.

The crash performance of the front structural components is crucial to
the safety of passengers. The vehicle's structure acts as the skeleton
of the automobile.  Although some current vehicles might have
composite body panels and fender -- the "skin" of a car -- composites
are not used in any primary structural applications.

The USCAR project builds on an earlier Ford study that successfully
crashed a composite front end, but that structure was not built using
production feasible processes. In that project, the fibers used in the
composite material were arranged by hand. To improve manufacturing
efficiency, the American automakers jointly developed innovative,
time-saving processes to arrange fibers in composite components.

"While this is a significant accomplishment, we're still in the early
stages of development of structural composites for high volume
manufacturing," explained Doug Denton, senior materials specialist at
Chrysler.

"We received significant input from the supplier community for this
project and we still need its expertise as we continue to develop
safe, reliable composites for mass production," Jeryan said. Exel
Pattern Works in Dearborn, Mich. molded the components. Other involved
suppliers include Atkins & Pearce, Covington, Ky.; The Budd Co.,
Auburn Hills, Mich.; Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Mich.,; GenCorp
Automotive, a subsidiary of Cambridge, Madison Heights, Mich.; ICI
Polyurethanes, Troy, Mich.; MFG Products, Ashtabula, Ohio; Owens
Corning, Toledo, Ohio; Troy Tooling, Troy, Mich.; and Vetrotex
Certainteed, Toledo, Ohio.

Working with another USCAR consortium, the Supercomputing Automotive
Applications Partnership (SCAAP), and several federal laboratories,
computer crash prediction models are being developed with data on
various composite materials and structural designs.  Accurate models
will speed the development of emerging composites technology.

USCAR's next major composites project is addressing the challenges of
manufacturing speed, quality and cost.  Working with Textron
Automotive and Magna International, USCAR has a goal to demonstrate
the improvement of composite processes by producing pick-up truck
boxes and tailgates in four minutes. The process currently takes more
than 1O minutes.

USCAR currently is planning a third major composites project that will
combine the primary challenges of the first two projects -- crash
energy management and manufacturing feasibility.