PNNL

Abstract

The automotive and heavy vehicle manufacturing markets are extremely sensitive to costs. Margins are not high in these markets and differences in fixed costs and national infrastructure between different companies and countries creates a highly competitive environment. Com¬posites can offer tremendous competitive advantages in this industry to help dif¬ferentiate between products by offering increased safety, strength, fuel efficiency, and recyclability. However, composites are by definition more complex than the largely monolithic materials they replace. This leads to a situation where the composite solution to a structural problem is often a higher-cost solution. To successfully implement a composite material into an engineering system there is a need to drive down the costs of the composite materials. This can be done through the use of low-cost raw mate¬rial precursors, low-cost manufacturing methods, or by using composites of high specific stiffness so that less material is needed in the structure. In this issue we have gathered five papers describing some of the recent advances in the application of low-cost composites to automotive and heavy vehicle manufacturing. These papers cover metal-matrix composites (MMCs), carbon fiber and natural fiber polymer-based composites, and a unique reaction-processed cermet. The papers included here are by no means exhaustive of the increasing new composite applications in transportation manufacturing, but give a flavor of some of the current research directions.