Latest materials used to save weight and improve performance
The steel industry is under siege: Carbon Fiber, Graphene and aluminium are rapidly making inroads into traditional automotive steel applications such as body in white, suspension, and even engine components. But, the recent unveiling of a new amorphous metal dubbed SAM2X5-630, could stall the trend in it’s tracks. The search for increasingly versatile alloys of […]
As far back as May 2009 Martin Goede, coordinator of the EU’s ‘SuperLight-Car’ project predicted that the reduction of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions would be the most important challenges facing the automotive industry in the future. “One way to reduce consumption is by reducing a car’s weight,” he added. Penalties for excess emissions have […]
The secret to the material’s extraordinary strength lies in the robustness of the covalent carbon-carbon bond and the fact that the one atom thick graphene monolayers can be produced defect-free. Essentially all materials contain defects, such as microscopic cracks or scratches, which are “weaker” than surrounding material. As a result, the breaking stress of a […]
Aluminium has long been used by manufacturers of performance vehicles and with a 10% reduction in vehicle weight achieving a 3-4% fuel saving, or as much as 5-7% if the power train is also downsized, it was only a matter of time before an OEM took the plunge with a radical approach to weight reduction […]
