Honda's new Clarity FCV has a rear bumper beam made with Tepex sheets and Durethan PA 6
Honda’s new Clarity hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (FCV), which the car maker showed at the Geneva auto show in March, has a unique composites component.
Materials company Lanxess said: “Honda has introduced the world-first development of hybrid-moulded rear bumper beam in the model using one-shot moulding technology enabled by Lanxess.” The bumper beam is made with Tepex continuous- and long-fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites with a polyamide 6 matrix from Bond-Laminates, the Lanxess subsidiary, in combination with Durethan PA 6 from Lanxess.
In the hybrid moulding process referred to by Lanxess, Tepex sheets are heated, formed, overmoulded and cooled in a single production step.
In the FCV bumper beam development, the materials are composed in several layers in combination with Tepex dynalite – which are continuous long glass fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composite sheets – and Tepex flowcore – which are random long glass fibre reinforced composite sheets. Lanxess said this combination enables an easy material flow in the overmoulding process to fill out complicated part geometry. It also enables a greater mechanical strength with a superior characteristic of dynamic energy absorption in critical applications such as the rear bumper beam.
“With this application, we not only realised the first rear bumper beam made out of Tepex and Durethan material, we also have the first serial automotive production in the Asia Pacific region for our composite material Tepex,“ said Deniz Guerkan, manager technical marketing and business development for Tepex Auto.
Lanxess said it supports automotive development all the way to mass production through its HiAnt custom services for lightweight design. The series production of the Clarity FCV bumper beam is done by Japanese injection moulding company Takagi Seiko. Sunwa Trading, distributor of Tepex sheets in Japan, also assisted the development process.
