a multi-material design and function integration.pdf

ORIGINAL PAPER Super Light Car—lightweight construction thanks to a multi-material design and function integration Martin Goede Marc Stehlin Lukas Rafflenbeul Gundolf Kopp Elmar Beeh Received: 2 October 2008 /Accepted: 5 November 2008 / Published online: 26 November 2008 # European Conference of Transport Research Institutes (ECTRI) 2008 Abstract The Super Light Car (SLC) project is one of the most important research projects in the European Commu- nity for automotive lightweight construction with a multi- material approach. The paper shows the motivation and objectives for a front structure designed with a light multi- material-mix. Keywords Super Light Car . Automotive lightweight construction .Multi-material structures 1 Motivation and challenge Global warming is a fact. One of the main reasons are the CO2 emissions (23%) being caused by the vehicle traffic. In 2005, this corresponded to approx. 6 billion metric tons of CO2 [1]. Without conducting an evaluation showing in detail how these emissions affect global warming, it can be said that the political pressure to reduce these emissions from vehicle traffic is increasing. As a result, several approaches have already been accomplished by the automotive industry. The reduction in consumption and emissions remains the greatest techno- logical challenge for the automotive industry [2, 3]. The reduction in consumption required cannot be achieved through continual improvement of the drive chain and thus an increase in energy efficiency alone. The path of reducing driving resistances, especially vehicle weight, must also be followed. Vehicle mass affects the energy consumption of the vehicle through mass-related driving resistances. Reducing weight by 100 kg leads to a fuel savings of 0.35 l/100 km and 8.4 g CO2/km with gasoline engines in the NEDC if taking into account an adjustment of the gear shifting without a change in elasticity and acceleration values due to the lower weight [4]. 2 Super Light Car (SLC) EU