Polypropylene Copolymer Automotive Canopy Plastic Structure Application

2018-01-0157

04/03/2018

Features
Event
WCX World Congress Experience
Authors Abstract
Content
This paper describes modified polypropylene copolymer (PPCP) material for canopy plastic structure in a modular commercial passenger vehicle. This compounded PPCP material has optimized flow behavior, tensile strength, modulus, impact strength, and thermal properties to meet the functional requirements. Material described in this paper is a PPCP compound reinforced with glass fiber and mica filler. The application described in this paper is a canopy plastic structure, which is a structural exterior plastic part. Canopy plastic structure acts as a structural frame to hold vinyl canopy in both sides and tail gate of vehicle.
In this paper, PPCP has been explored for canopy plastic structure part against conventional polyamides. Structural durability of the design was validated by virtual engineering. Part design and material combinations with better tooling design iterations were analyzed by using mold flow analysis. Product performance was validated for predefined key test metrics such as structural durability, torquing, thermal aging and cold impact. This part met required specification. This PPCP material based canopy plastic structure part has various benefits such as potential weight reduction (15%), better dimensional stability under sun load, and considerable cost reduction on part, tool and process.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2018-01-0157
Pages
4
Citation
Govindaraj, K., Ritesh, K., Narayanan, R., Rajkumar, A. et al., "Polypropylene Copolymer Automotive Canopy Plastic Structure Application," SAE Technical Paper 2018-01-0157, 2018, https://doi.org/10.4271/2018-01-0157.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Apr 3, 2018
Product Code
2018-01-0157
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English