[China Aluminum Network] In recent years, the crisis of energy and the environment has accelerated the strict control of the energy consumption and emissions of products in the automotive industry. By 2020, the fuel consumption of passenger vehicles in countries and regions outside the United States will be strictly limited to 5L/100km and the carbon emissions will be more stringent (domestic at 2020). Will adopt the national VI emission standards).
This forces new energy vehicle technology and lightweight design of automobiles to become the two most important ways to improve energy consumption. With regard to the development trend of new energy automotive technology and the interpretation of current mainstream technologies, I have read a detailed explanation of these articles in Fei Ling's article. I mainly wanted to talk about the current car lightweighting technology.
Lightweight Design Implementation Path and Development Status
There are mainly two forms of the current path for achieving lightweight design of automobiles: one is through the rational and accurate design of the structure, the main load-bearing parts of the car body are strengthened, and the non-main load-bearing components are rationally weakened. Under the premise of satisfying the performance, the section size of the force transmission channel is reduced as much as possible, and a reasonable and fine selection of material thickness is used to realize the lightweight design of the structure. The other is the use of new materials instead of ordinary steel to achieve lightweight design, such as using aluminum alloy, GFRP (glass fiber reinforced plastic) and CFRP (carbon fiber) and other new materials with smaller density instead of steel to achieve lightweight design, such as The use of thermoformed materials with higher strength and thinner plate thickness (thermoformed materials are essentially steel) instead of ordinary high-strength steels reduces the number of reinforced structural parts for lightweight design.
In actual car design, these two lightweight ways are often used in conjunction with each other to achieve a greater degree of lightweight design of the vehicle body, while also promoting each other's development. For example, in the design of the A-column upper pillars, B-pillars, etc., the current mainstream design is the use of thermoforming materials to replace the design of ordinary high-strength steel, the use of thermoforming materials itself is a lightweight design, but The use of thermoformed materials allows these body areas to reduce the structural design of the reinforcements. The use of unequal thickness thermoformed plates can even eliminate the existing hinge stiffeners, retainer reinforcements, and other structures of the B-pillars. The refined structural design has promoted the development of unequal thickness plates, laser tailor-welded plates, and aluminum alloys.
Unequal Thick Thermoforming B-pillar Reinforcement Plate for a U.S. SUV
The lightweight design of the structure is different because of the different features of the models, and the major OEMs have different factors in setting their own vehicle body performance targets. The design ideas will not be consistent, and details will not be elaborated here. In addition, the effect of lightweight construction is not as rapid as the light weight of materials, and new models that require significant improvements in power performance, handling performance, and energy consumption are currently relying on lightweight materials.
Due to the constraints of the overall industrial development level, OEM R&D strengths and production conditions, and product brand factors, the current status of mainstream OEM lightweight design is the light weight of each structure, and the lightweight materials are only a few of the leading manufacturers. Show off." This article is also mainly to talk to everyone about the current status of lightweight OEM materials.
Mainstream lightweight materials
The material that can not only ensure the performance of the car body structure but also significantly reduce the weight of the car body. At present, carbon fiber, aluminum alloy, magnesium alloy, engineering plastic and other low density materials are commonly used in the industry. The use of these materials in the body structure has a significant weight reduction effect. Taking the Ford F150 aluminum alloy body as an example, the body has achieved more than 40% weight loss, and the overall quality has been reduced by 300kg. The BMW i3, which is made of carbon fiber and aluminum alloy, has a more lightweight effect. As a purely electric vehicle, the mass of the vehicle is only 1195kg. Compared with conventional models of the same size, it is about 150Kg lighter.
Here to talk about several issues aluminum alloy body. The so-called all-aluminum body is actually an aluminum alloy body rather than a pure aluminum body. At present, in the aluminum alloy car body models that are being mass produced, the mainstream adopts a composite structure made of aluminum alloy and steel: the A pillar upper edge beam, the B pillar reinforcement plate, the door impact beam, and the nacelle front baffle lower reinforcement plate of the upper body. Or, the main load-bearing structures related to collision safety, such as the front section of the front longitudinal beam, will still use thermoformed steel. For example, the BMW 7 Series and the Cadillac CT6 are all steel-aluminum composite bodies. At present, there is no complete aluminum alloy body in the industry. Even Tesla, which is called aluminum, has an actual utilization rate of only 98%. Other composite materials are also used in the vehicle body, such as non-roofed roof covers. Resin materials and the like are used.
The use ratio of aluminum alloys in various systems in automobiles can be seen in the figure below. The main use is in body and chassis system components:
Lightweight new materials for vehicles are costly to use
Currently, the cost of lightweight new materials for vehicles is generally high. At present, the cost per ton of automotive cold-rolled sheet metal is between 5,000 and 9,000, while the material cost per ton of aluminum alloy is as high as 45,000. Carbon fiber materials The cost is even higher, about 800,000 tons per ton, and because of its high molding waste rate problem, many low-end models in the use of carbon fiber is even prohibitive. Therefore, at present, the use of aluminum alloy, carbon fiber and other new materials as the main structure of the main body of the models are generally sold at more than 400,000, while the aluminum castings were relatively early in the engine housing, suspension arm, subframe and other chassis and power system The use of parts, due to the proportion of the cost of the development of the vehicle is relatively small, equipped with different models.
Comparison of New Material Data of F&S Statistics
Note: Density, tensile strength, material international price of ordinary strength steel, high strength steel, aluminum alloy, magnesium alloy, titanium alloy, carbon fiber
The use of new lightweight materials by OEMs will also involve the transformation of traditional production line equipment. The stamping, welding, and coating production lines in the four major processes will all need to face substantial remodeling or reconstruction of the work stations. The investment of hundreds of millions of dollars is still at present for many of them. For self-owned brand of subsistence line, it is more than enough. Followed by aluminum, carbon fiber and other material supply chain is also relatively scarce in the country, the supplier of aluminum plates is only the factories in Jiangsu, such as Novelis and Tianjin Kobe, and only the Nobelis family can supply the entire series of aluminum plates. At present, it is mainly supplied to Jaguar Land Rover and other high-end models. The main suppliers of carbon fiber are Japan's Toray and Teijin, which account for most of the world's share. However, the advanced technology of carbon fiber processing is Germany.
The current status of mainstream OEM lightweight materials
For self-owned brands, due to the constraints of many external conditions, the lightweight design of self-owned brands is mainly based on the use of structural lightweighting strategies, supplemented by the use of partially thermoformed plates and unequal thick plates. Therefore, the main components of the car body are basically steel, and there are not too many new materials in the main structural components, and only the suspension arms, body anti-collision beams, and engine covers of the high-end self-owned brand models. The engine block and other parts will use aluminum alloy and the filling port will be made of engineering plastics, etc. The proportion is relatively low.
In fact, from the above analysis, it is not difficult to find that lighter materials are mainly used in some high-end luxury cars that are not sensitive to cost and are more sensitive to weight-sensitive pure electric vehicles. These models are mainly concentrated in three countries: Germany, the United States, and Japan. Let's take a look at the proportion of lightweight materials in these auto powers in the entire vehicle.
The first is Germany. On the one hand, due to the stricter policies on energy consumption and emissions in Europe, on the other hand, Germany is a country with many luxury brand models. New materials and new technologies will also have a sense of technological luxury for high-end models. Therefore, German car companies represented by ABB are more enthusiastic about the use of new materials. In particular, Audi is an industry leader in the aluminum alloy body and BMW's carbon fiber body.
In 2015, Germany's new production of automotive aluminum alloys and other new materials accounted for up to 25% of the body and chassis. It is the world’s current high proportion of automotive lightweight materials, the use of new materials will continue to rise in 2020. It will reach about 34%.
Followed by the United States, the United States, although high-end luxury brand models are also more, but the US automotive industry's enthusiasm for new lightweight materials mainly comes from the development of new energy vehicles and the pressure of emissions and energy consumption, representing companies are Tesla, GM, Ford et al. Tesla's current Model S and Model X basically use aluminum alloys and other composite materials on the body and chassis, and GM's high-end brand Cadillac has also begun to adopt the steel-aluminum composite body structure in new models in the past two years, such as Cadillac CT6, Ford is the first to carry aluminum body on the high-end pickup truck type F150.
Affected by the environmental and energy crisis, the U.S. government has issued many preferential policies to encourage the development of new energy vehicles, and companies have also shown high enthusiasm. This has led the U.S. to be in a leading position in global R&D and production of new energy vehicles. With the further development of this trend, strict restrictions will be imposed on emissions by 2020. The ratio of production and sales of new energy vehicles will further increase, and the proportion of new lightweight materials will further increase, and this proportion may be from the current 15%. Raise to about 20%.
Japanese auto companies have always been the masters of structural lightweighting, and they have always been very good players in the management of energy consumption, so auto companies do not have much obvious material lightweighting. In the research and development of new energy vehicles, Japan is mainly based on hybrid power and hydrogen fuel cell power. Even pure electric vehicles are based on k-car models. There is no urgent need for lightweight requirements for pure electric vehicles. At present, the proportion of lightweight materials used in Japanese auto companies is not high, only about 10%.
At present, the use of lightweight materials by Japanese auto companies is mainly concentrated on some non-structural parts such as aluminum alloy hoods, plastic fenders and tailgates, and some aluminum castings for chassis and engines. . Among the companies represented are Toyota's Lexus and Honda Acura. Honda has used the aluminum alloy body design on the Akura NSX body. Toyota already uses aluminum alloy for the hood of the currently mass-produced NX series models, and engineering plastics are used for the tailgate. It is planned for 2018. The replacement of Camry employs the design of an aluminum alloy body.
With the increasingly stringent global energy consumption and emission policies in 2020, Japanese companies have also begun to increase their R&D investment in materials lightweighting. It is expected that by 2020, the proportion of lightweight materials of Japanese auto companies in the chassis and body will increase. Catch up with the United States, reaching about 20%.
Review
From the above analysis, the proportion of lightweight materials used can illustrate the industry level of automotive materials in the light of the automotive materials in the region, and can also reflect the level of development of new energy vehicles in the region. And from the current trend, with the further reduction in material costs, the development of aluminum alloy car bodies may usher in an explosion period in the next few years, by 2025, the aluminum alloy production scale may reach the current four times the above.
At present, self-owned brands have not been very bright in the mileage of pure electric vehicles, a large part of which is limited by the development of strong quantitative applications of automobiles. Lightweight design is a necessary way for the development of new energy vehicles, with 2020 As the energy consumption of automobiles in 2025 will reach the limit, both companies and governments must increase their R&D investment in lightweight automotive materials.
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