Solvay has won the 2016 Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) process innovation award for the most innovative composite part. The award is for the BMW M4 GTS Hood made using Solvay’s materials and processes, in collaboration with C-Con and Läpple.
The hood was pressed using Solvay’s rapid cure thermoset resin system MTR 760 which reportedly has 40% weight reduction over traditional materials. This weight reduction combined with successful head impact crash tests and functional tests and the ability to use existing metal stamping assets for composite production made MTR 760 a suitable material for the application. C-Con (development, tooling and system leading supplier) and Läpple (pressing and bonding) workedwith Solvay and reached automated serial production nine months after the start of the project.
‘We are honored to receive this innovation awards from SPE for an application we are very proud of,’ said Gerald Perrin, Solvay composite materials global automotive director. ‘At Solvay we are committed to working with the OEMs and their composites part manufacturers to develop materials and processes to enable the volume manufacture of composite structures for serial automotive’.
This story uses material from Solvay, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
