Development of Door Module Plate with Long-fiber-reinforced Thermoplastic Polypropylene

These days, many new applications for long-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic Polypropylene (PP-LFT) have been coming in the worldwide automobile market. Main issue of this paper is to explain how PP-LFT door module plate was developed, which processes were executed, and what kind of advantages we can get, once it is used as door module plate. Some of steel parts in the car have been changed to the reinforced PP-LFT with weight-saving. Change of material can make modularity more efficient, and then improvement of manufacturing process results in cost-saving. Stress analyses and MoldFlow analyses have been performed to choose the optimized conditions and a product model. Then various tests including waterproof test, drop-weight test and stiffness test have been executed to check if the weight-reduction is suitable for mass-production. PP-LFT door module plates including 40% glass-fiber were used in this paper using above mentioned methods, and, as a result, it is proved to get 21.5% weight reduction of plate and 12% reduction of door module assembly versus conventional steel module plates.