Send this page / Print this page Home / Composites News / Applications

28 Dec 2005  -  Switzerland

GMT composite pedestrian beam wins in new safety category at SPE® innovation awards gala

At its 35th-annual Innovation Awards Gala, the Automotive Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers International (SPE®) awarded a composite pedestrian beam moulded from glass-mat thermoplastic (GMT) with a first-place finish for the Most Innovative Use of Plastics in the group’s new Safety Category. Featured on vehicles from Volkswagen, the beam helps improve the safety of pedestrians, considered in the European Union to be the most threatened road
users. The award was accepted by representatives from the OEM, Volkswagen, Tier
One supplier and moulder, AKsys GmbH, and materials supplier, Quadrant Plastic
Composites AG.
Enhanced pedestrian protection is a high priority in the European Union (EU), where
pedestrian deaths account for 20% of all road casualties and about 290,000 injuries per
year. Children under the age of 12 incur the highest number of these deaths and serious
injuries. To help reduce fatalities and serious injuries among the most vulnerable road users,
the automotive industry in Europe has voluntarily adopted a set of proactive requirements to
add pedestrian protection to the front of their vehicles. The pedestrian protection beam is
conceived as one way of reducing lower leg and knee trauma during first contact with the
vehicle’s front end.
As would be expected, different OEMs and their suppliers are approaching this voluntary
obligation by designing pedestrian protection beams in different ways in order to fit existing
vehicle designs without adversely affecting vehicle balance and weight. In the case of
Volkswagen and AKsys, a number of profile designs and material combinations were
evaluated. The goal of each combination was to add stiffness by mounting an extra carrier
below the existing bumper beam and reducing weight and costs of existing metal solutions.
The team finally settled on a high-performance GMTex® textile-reinforced glass-mat
thermoplastic (GMT) composite from Quadrant Plastic Composites.
The advantages offered by the GMT / GMTex composite vs. other design / material
combinations in the pedestrian beam include:
¡ Excellent performance for increased road safety and reduced pedestrian injury or death,
¡ Integration into existing vehicle designs allowing for a small offset geometry / package
space and lower spoiler geometry, while maintaining existing hood, grill, and headlamp position / angles,
¡ Significant decrease in part and investment costs vs. steel designs
o 50% weight reduction for better fuel economy and lower operating costs,
o 40% reduction in tooling costs,
o 50% lower materials costs vs. steel with ribs,
¡ And better recycling performance vs. the metal / nylon-glass hybrids.

These materials provided excellent stiffness and toughness and consistent performance in
the operating temperature range of -40 to 80C for this application while reducing mass and
costs. The ability during blank manufacture and during compression molding to tune the
mechanical properties of GMT / GMTex composites by varying the type, quantity,
orientation, and order of layers of chopped and continuous glass fibers, and woven and nonwoven
fabrics gives designers a high degree of design freedom rarely found in other
material / process combinations. Compression moulding also is capable of producing complex
geometries in variable part thicknesses quickly on an automated process with short cycle
times to meet the needs of medium- and high-volume vehicle builds.
Volkswagen has already adopted the GMT composite pedestrian beam on many of its
models, including:
¡ Bora® (100,000 annual build)
¡ Golf® GTI (46,000 annual build)
¡ Golf Plus (220,000 annual build)
And even more VW models will have the composite pedestrian protection beam from 2006
on.
Additionally, the Mercedes S-Class vehicle from DaimlerChrysler (70,000 annual build) also
uses a GMT pedestrian beam. This design combines an engine shield with the pedestrian
beam. A 2-piece system is used in the EU while a 1-piece design is used in North America.
Many of these vehicles are considered medium- and high-volume builds, yet the
compression moulding process has no trouble keeping pace with assembly, producing an
average of 6 parts / minute in family tooling.
This is the first year that SPE has had a Safety category in its Innovation Awards
competition. The long-standing SPE Innovation Awards program is affectionately referred to
as the “Academy Awards® of the plastics industry,” and is considered the premier recognition
event in the automotive and plastics industries. This is the third year in a row that globalsupplier
Quadrant has received top honors at the Innovation Awards event for one of its
applications. Last year, the composite supplier was honored along with Tier 1, Faurecia, and
molders FPK, S.A., a 50/50 JV with AKsys GmbH and the Spanish Mondragon Group,
Faurecia Moulding Division of France, and Nishikawa of Japan for a hybrid GMT / metal
instrument panel carrier used with 6 IP designs on 12 vehicles sold worldwide by Ford,
Volvo, and Mazda. Two years ago, Quadrant was honored along with Seeber and BMW for
underbody shields made from SymaLITE, a new lightweight reinforced thermoplastic
(LWRT) composite. Quadrant has also supplied materials for applications that have won
awards in Europe and Asia in recent years.

Source : Quadrant Plastic Composites AG