Effect of PVC Skin and Its Properties on Automotive Door Trim Inserts

Plastic plays a major role in automotive interiors. Till now most of the Indian automobile industries are using plastics mainly to cover the bare sheet metal panels and to reduce the weight of the vehicle along with safety concerns. Eventually Indian customer requirement is changing towards luxury vehicles. Premium look and luxury feel of the vehicle plays an equal role along with fuel economy and cost. Interior cabin is the place where aesthetics and comfort is the key to attract customers. Door Trims are one of the major areas of interiors where one can be able to provide premium feeling to the customer by giving PVC skin and decorative inserts. This paper deals with different types of PVC skins and its properties based on process constraints, complexity of the inserts. Door trim inserts can be manufactured by various methods like adhesive pasting, thermo-compression molding and low pressure injection molding process etc. Considering process feasibility and PVC skin manufacturing constraints, it will be a challenge to decide the specifications of the PVC skin to achieve good quality product. The objective of this paper is to review the effect of PVC skin & its properties on door trim inserts using Low pressure injection molding and discuss steps involved in selecting the appropriate PVC skin.