For years now, Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials has been developing and producing glass-mat-reinforced thermoplastics (GMT) for automobile production and is considered the market leader in this segment. Hardly a car leaves the production line without lightweight components fabricated with the special semi-finished products from the Swiss materials developer.
Classic GMT materials consist of glass fiber mats manufactured to the company’s own patents, and these are impregnated with polypropylene in a second process step. The result is materials with outstanding impact resistance and optimum crash behavior. Even at low temperatures, GMT ensures high energy absorption before fracture and thereafter positive failure behavior without sharp lines of fracture.
GMT and GMTex reinforced with extra fabric are used for the production of semi-structural and structural components that meet the highest standards of crash safety for the protection of vehicle occupants and other road users. GMTex is even employed in areas conventionally reserved for metals.
Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials also produces a lightweight composite, a low-weight reinforced thermoplastic (LWRT), by the name of SymaLITE. This material consists of mixed-fiber fleeces of glass and polymer fibers supplied in rolls or boards. The moulder heats the material and produces the three-dimensionally molded component by low-pressure pressing.
Structural Components
The composites GMT and GMTex developed by Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials Composites make it possible to replace structural and semi-structural vehicle parts made of metal with lighter, fabric-reinforced composite components.
These innovative materials are already firmly established in large-series production. Among others, bumper brackets, battery cases and even body parts like the front end are made from GMT or GMTex.
The composite-only solution without additional steel reinforcement in series production is possible because the reinforced thermoplastic composite materials display extremely good material properties in terms of rigidity, strength, dimensional stability and crash performance.
The use of GMT and GMTex always yields weight savings, fewer production steps in series production and greater design freedom.
Lightweight Components
SymaLITE, a high-strength composite, has become established as an all-round material for extra-high weight savings combined with outstanding mechanical and physical characteristics. This product group of glass-reinforced thermoplastic mixed-fiber fleeces can be processed inexpensively into three-dimensional moldings by low-pressure pressing. Be it as the sole material for applications such as load compartment floors, headliners, sun roofs and rear window shelves or in combination with GMT/GMTex, SymaLITE facilitates the development of novel lightweight construction strategies.
The SymaLITE applications also extend to undershields. SymaLITE permits the production of an almost continuous corrosion- and wear-resistant undershield which, thanks to the material’s properties, is extremely light, inherently rigid and also acoustically effective. Installed in wheel arch liners or as covers for engines and gearboxes, the superlight composite absorbs noise as it arises.
Designed as a folding load compartment floor with an integrated backrest module, SymaLITE facilitates a high-strength, inherently rigid and at the same time extremely lightweight solution for adjustable storage spaces. A decorative film can be integrated during pressing. This saves a whole production step and avoids the use of adhesives.
Interior Components
The fittings of the vehicle interior include many different components made of fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites. In particular, versatile and inexpensively processed SymaLITE is becoming popular for more and more new applications – not least because it can be combined at the production stage with functional or decorative cover layers to customer specification.
Here are a few examples of the use of GMT/GMTex and SymaLITE components in the passenger compartment: Headliners, sun roofs, rear window shelves, seat and backrest constructions, seat covers, and linings of doors, pillars and luggage compartments.
Metal Plastic Solutions (MPS)
Since 2008, the business unit Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials Composites has been involved through a company of its own in the development of special lightweight components made of long-fiber-reinforced plastic composites and hybrid materials, among other things for the automotive industry. At Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials Composites GmbH located in Chemnitz, the search is on for new materials and hybrid strategies that enable entirely new component concepts and production methods thanks to the ingenious merger of metals and plastics.
In close cooperation with the customer, capable teams of materials, design and production specialists draw up customized component strategies for innovative lightweight component applications.
The services available comprise consultations on design and the choice of material, CAD and FEM computation, prototype construction, component testing and the planning of the series production of lightweight components.
To permit informative results from component testing and their documentation, comprehensive test equipment is available for the defined simulation of all relevant conditions:
Compression-tension test equipment up to 100 kN
Climate chamber for temperatures of -40 to +100°C
Heat chamber (up to 130°C)
Press equipment (100, 600 and 1,200 t)
Fatigue strength analysis with special devices
30m drop tower
100m long slide track
Shaker