US car company applies for patent on automotive composite chassis

The United States Automobile Research Council (abbreviated as USCAR), a technology cooperation organization of the three major auto giants of Chrysler, Ford and GM, recently obtained a patent issued by the U.S. Patent Office for a composite shallow disk base plate in automobiles. The base plate is made of fiberglass-reinforced plastic, which can replace 17 steel parts in a typical car, reducing the weight of 25 pounds, so the organization claims that this patent has a milestone value.

This base plate is molded from a fabric SMC and is a sandwich structure: a high elongation fabric layer is sandwiched between glass cloth layers. The configuration of the platter bottom plate absorbs or transmits external dynamic loads (impact forces). It passed the load test and maintained the integrity of the material. The SMC composite used in this project is a glass fiber reinforced polyester resin. For large-scale automotive applications, carbon fiber reinforced plastics are still too expensive.

Currently, SMC molders use chopped glass fibers and resins to form automotive parts such as wheel covers, dashboards, trunk lids, and doors. The glass fiber fabric is more structurally reinforced, so its molding requirements are more complicated. How many layers are required for lay-up and preforming, and how the deformation affects the material properties is a research topic of this cooperative organization.