Plastic Windshield Wiper Arm

To reduce the weight of the front windshield system, a fiber reinforced plastic design for the wiper arm and blade is being investigated.

The use of suitable thermoplastics reinforced with short fiberglass allows the elaboration of good stiffness parts by injection moulding. Tests were carried out to show that stiffness depends on the fiberglass concentration and orientation. Likewise the temperature leads a decreasing of mechanical properties.

Processing conditions of plastics have significant influence and aim to increase their performances, effectively a distribution in the orientation of fiberglass can be observed in the thermoplastic matrix. Various experimental means are used to characterise the plastic materials.