OREANDA-NEWS. The weight saving trend in the automotive sector is not only unbroken; it is becoming increasingly important as the year 2020 approaches – this is when the fleet CO2 emissions of European automobile manufacturers must comply with significantly more stringent requirements.

Thermoplastic materials, with both short and long fiber reinforcement, have made a major contribution to lightweighting today, because with their help innumerable metal production components were replaced by equally capable plastic counterparts. In the meantime, these plastic components and materials are starting to reach their fundamental limits. The next big advance in metal substitution in vehicle construction will succeed only with a technological leap, namely, using continuous-fiber reinforcement of injection molded structures, i.e., with thermoplastic composites. Once fully established, thermoplastic and thermoset composites will account for a market volume of about €2 billion in the long term.

For this reason, BASF is now expanding its activities in the field of engineering plastics to include a completely new approach called Ultracom™. This is a package of three components: continuous fiber reinforced semi-finished products, adapted overmolding compounds and the complementing engineering support. The key innovations in this new approach are laminates based on woven fabrics and unidirectional (UD) tapes that are fully impregnated with Ultramid® or Ultradur®, the polyamide and PBT materials from BASF. These thermoplastic composites are being enhanced in a development cooperation together with TenCate, the globally active fiber-reinforced composites manufacturer, and Owens Corning, the leading supplier of glass fibers.

The second component of the Ultracom package consists of the overmolding materials that have been developed specifically for use with these laminates. These materials are also from the Ultramid and Ultradur product lines, this time in the form of compounds. By using them in combination with the laminates and tapes, it is possible to injection mold complex parts that have very high mechanical reinforcement by use of continuous fibers at precisely defined locations while simultaneously incorporating specific functions as the result of overmolding.

At the K 2013, BASF will already be able to offer first commercial Ultracom product packages. For customer projects requiring parts of high stiffness, the package consists of an Ultralaminate™ based on polyamide 6 (or an Ultratape™ if highly directed reinforcements are needed) in combination with Ultramid G12 COM with 60 percent glass fiber reinforcement as overmolding compound. For crash loaded applications with a special need for impact strength, BASF offers a package which is optimized for high energy absorption. This package consists of Ultralaminate and Ultramid ZG7 COM. In this case the tape version Ultratape exists for local reinforcement, for example as required in seat structures. It can be overmolded with the same Ultramid ZG7 COM. For the time being, the orthotropic Twill-2/2 structure familiar from technical textiles and polyamide 6 will be used for the laminates. The first pre-production parts realized by Ultracom will be displayed at the K-Show 2013.