It will come as no surprise that there was a major emphasis placed on the automotive sector at both the JEC Composites Show held in Paris last month and also at the INDEX 14 event for nonwovens held from April 8-11 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The second meeting of the new Automotive Composites Circle – an exclusive networking event for top management in the automotive sector – was held at JEC and attracting OEMs including Audi, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Lamborghini, Lexus, Lotus, McLaren, Porsche, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Renault, Toyota and Volvo.

JEC is predicting a steep rise in the volumes of composites that will be employed by the automotive industry in the coming years, with growth of an annual 9% up to 2015 leading to a volume of 1,971,000 tons, and 10% annual growth between 2016-2020 resulting in 3,172,000 tons being used in 2020.

“JEC believes that new forms of collaboration are needed to foster the rise of composites solutions,” explained JEC secretary general Daniel Ageda. “OEMs, suppliers and the academic world must move up with new and fresh approaches to collaborate and learn from each other through an organised networking programme. Whether we talk about new car architectures, new processes or new materials, composites can meet the challenge of placing the right material, for the right function at the right cost in a mass production constraint. We have recently seen important strategic moves from OEMs that demonstrate beyond doubt composites have a bright future in automotive.”

The enormous success achieved over the last decade in replacing the steel and even aluminium in aircraft structures with carbon fibre-based composites has driven the industry forward.

The Airbus A380 and Boeing’s Dreamliner have expanded the use of composites considerably, with content increasing from 23% in previous planes to over 50%.

Technology transfer

Now there is a belief that what’s been learned along the way can be transferred to commercial car production.

This is a market of a much higher magnitude of course – there were over 82 million cars and light vehicles produced in 2013 alone and there are now approaching a billion of them actually on the planet.

With its new i series of carbon-bodied electric vehicles, BMW has made a major commitment to this ambitious transformation and JEC Composites 14 was awash with further examples of carbon-fibre based parts composed largely of woven, multi-axial or unidirectional fabrics.

There is, however, a downside to all of this development – what to do with the carbon fibre composites once all of those planes and cars reach the end of their useful life.

And so far nonwovens are being viewed as the only realistic solution.

BMW has established a recycling system in which it is turning the carbon waste for all of its i Series processes into nonwovens.

The nonwoven roof of the BMW i3 is already being made of recycled carbon fibre collected from the company’s plants in both the USA and Germany and the structure of the back seat frame of the car also employs them.

Many other companies are now actively working with Airbus and Boeing on nonwovens based on recycled carbon.

Opportunities

At the INDEX 14 Automotive Forum, a number of new opportunities for nonwovens in vehicles were outlined, including their use in new exterior parts.

Densely-needled nonwoven wheel arch liners – the first nonwovens as exterior parts – were introduced by a number of companies almost 20 years ago. Now they’re being used as undershields too.

They replace heavy PVC layers and provide a considerable reduction in weight at a comparable price. These highly-rigid components have to withstand a lot of strain, and the demands on the materials from which they are manufactured is very high.

Audi, BMW, Ford, Volkswagen and even Porsche have now switched to nonwovens for their undershields.

Nonwovens as a replacement for polyurethane foam is another area with great potential and the Citroen group is one of the companies now in the process of replacing the PU foam in the seating of its standard vehicles with melt-bonded nonwovens.

Natural fibre nonwovens in composites are also now used extensively by all of the main car makers in headliners, door panels, boot liners etc.

An example cited was the door panel of the Mercedes C class made by Boshoku Europe which is being turned into a rigid composite part in just 45 seconds at 150°C and has a high impact strength. It’s also rigid, very light and dimensionally stable.

St Neots, UK-headquartered EcoTechnilin, meanwhile, produces floor panels for Jaguar based on its flax nonwovens.

This is just scratching the surface of the expansion opportunities for both technical textile-based composites and nonwovens – and there’s plenty more mileage left.