SPE Awards Auto Innovators
By Staff | December 01, 2005
More than 800 automotive engineers, executives, materials suppliers and media attended the 35th Innovation Awards Gala Nov. 16, in Livonia, Mich., as the Automotive Div. of the Society of Plastics Engineers Int'l (SPE) presented 11 awards for plastics innovations in transportation applications.
Source: Honda
SPE's "Grand Award," and the "Body Exterior" award went to the team that developed the 2005 Honda Ridgeline pickup truck's composite In-Bed Trunk (see CT April, 2005 p. 52). Molded from sheet molding compound (SMC), it provides 8.5 ft3 of lockable, weather-tight, rustproof stowage. The rugged trunk offers a weight savings of 30 percent vs. steel. Its seven-piece construction replaced over 100 steel parts.
Other honored composite components included "Body Interior" winner General Motors' (GM) HVAC film valve, featured on the 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix sports sedan. The highly flexible film -- polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), fiberglass, and silicone rubber -- acts as a noise-free valve in a housing to precisely meter airflow without stratification of hot and cold airstreams. The "Environmental" category was topped by DaimlerChrysler's composite spare-tire carrier on the Mercedes-Benz A-Class 6 mini-car. Here, abaca fiber replaced glass in a polypropylene matrix -- the first large-scale use of a natural-fiber composite on an auto exterior. The "Process/Assembly/Enabling Technologies" winner was the world's first bonded hybrid metal/plastic front-end carrier, for the 2005 Volkswagen Polo A05GM compact car. Its stiffness-to-weight ratio was optimized by adhesive bonding a metal reinforcement to an injection molded, long glass fiber-reinforced polypropylene carrier, reducing stress concentrations (associated with fasteners) and spreading the load over the entire structure. And in a new category, "Safety," the award went to two pedestrian protection systems used on front ends of European vehicles. One system, on the 2005 Suzuki Swift compact car, features a two-piece polycarbonate/polybutylene terephthalate (PC/PBT) energy absorbing system, which fits within a 45-mm/1.8-inch packaging space. The second, on the 2005 Volkswagen Golf hatchback, uses a glass-mat thermoplastic (GMT) composite beam to meet requirements. The "Hall of Fame award, presented to applications at least a decade old for their "enduring impact on plastics usage in the auto industry", went to the thermoplastic intake manifold first used on the 1972 Porsche 911 sportscar and subsequently adapted for most production auto engines.
