FiberForge carbon materials and cutting auto weight in half.

This would be great since we have to have all the stupid safety features. If they would make better driving tests, or something you need to take every couple of years, then we wouldn't need all the safety features.

I know way too many people that have licenses and can't even drive properly, no joke. They got away with "I know how to drive but I just don't know English that well." I swear to God I'm not kidding. They may not be white people, but give me a break.

If you got rid of all the safety features then the car would be several hundred pounds lighter and cost a hell of a lot less.

Some features are quite useful, like ABS and such, but things like airbags aren't so necessary.

I'm gonna go away and just look stupid now, if that's ok with you.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alexstarfire @ May 14 2007, 10:16 PM) [snapback]442233[/snapback]</div>

There is one universal truism when it comes to safety and high speed transportation . . . it doesn't matter if you are talking planes, trains, automobiles, boats, whatever . . . SPEED KILLS!

There are only two ways to prevent injury to the human body when high speeds are involved.
1) Prevent the accident from happening in the first place.
2) Decrease the speed the body is moving to a non-lethal or non-injurious speed prior to secondary impact. (Secondary impact is when the body hits. :blink: - i.e. The car hits a wall, then the body hits the car.)

No driving test(s) are going to prevent all, or even most high speed accidents. Therefor, in order to try to save option #1, you need to remove the driver and replace them with automated systems to prevent the accident from happening. Automated systems too will never be up to the task of preventing ALL accidents.

*Flash forward to the year 2050*: All automobiles are now driven by computers for safety considerations. One half second before the car traveling 100 MPH reaches that point, a freeway overpass crashes down onto the roadway . . . oops, onto option #2.

Safety restraint devices are the only way to safely slow the human body in an extremely short amount of space and time (a high speed crash). The human body can not survive hitting an immovable object at 50 MPH or more all on its own. Only with the use of restraint devices like seat belts and airbags can the forces involved be dissipated over a large enough area and time. The body directly hitting a brick wall just won't cut it.

 

I don't support the removal of safety device- even if everyone were well educated and well trained, we can't predict each other's behaviours nor can we plan for random events, so accidents will still happend and I'm quite happy to sacrifice a bit of weight for the safety devices..

That said, being comparatively short, a wearer of glasses and having suffer a broken arm in the past, I'm not crazy about steering wheel air bags that are known to shatter arms and break noses and glasses.. Curtain air bags are A-OK though..

As for carbon composite materials, on paper they sound good, but they make repair costs astronomical as in many cases, they cannot be patched but whole structures replaced, so what might have cost a few hundreds dollars of repair on a conventional auto might be many thousands of dollars.. Then there's the safety aspect- carbon composites do absorb and then spring back when the load is under their elastic limit, but for higher loads, unlike steel which deforms and further absorbs impact energy, carbon will just shatter leaving sharp, jagged edges.. So, no thank you.. No carbon composites in my vehicles please..

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(c4 @ May 15 2007, 07:40 AM) [snapback]442306[/snapback]</div>

Equally significant is that carbon fiber is a big energy user/cost in manufacturing. Some say that the gains in weight savings of carbon fiber can't outweigh the extra fuel costs of manufacturing.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ May 15 2007, 11:57 AM) [snapback]442628[/snapback]</div>

I looked the videos and I'm quite impressed by the toughness vs. weight, etc. However, I do wonder about the safety. They will have to go to considerable effort to allow something else to absorb the energy of impact. It appears that the carbon fiber materials are almost perfectly elastic. Unless something else absorbs that energy, the occupants of the car could be in grave danger. Most cars have "crumple zones" that take care of that problem.

Dave M.

 

Hi All,

This is not your grandfathers Carbon Reinforced Aerospace Composite they are talking about here. It uses a thermo-plastic matrix, not a thermo-set plastic matrix.

Thermo-set plastics are like phenolic (billiard balls), Epoxy and Polyurethane. You mix two chemicals together, they react and form a rigid mass. The resulting plastic is not reformable, does not melt, but just gets soft with heating (called the Glass Transistion temperature, Tg). With continued heating the stuff just starts to burn.

Thermo-sets, mostly Epoxies, are what is used in aerospace structures. They are costly, and require special tooling and giant devices called auto-claves to properly cure into a strong part.

Fiber-Forge is not doing this. They use a class of plastics called thermo-plastics. A common thermo-plastic is like a pop, or milk bottle. The plastic can be chopped back up, remelted and remolded.

Developements of Thermo-plastics in the last 10 years have been amazing. One of these newer plastics is called PEEK (Poly Ether Ether Ketone), and there is a class of plastics called LCP's. A recent entry is Prima-Spire (was called Parmax). I have a sample of Prima-Spire for testing, but it did not work well electrically. Its so light, yet the 3/8 inch diameter rod rings when you use it as a drum stick. These plastics have the strength of near or better than un-alloyed aluminum.

When I was a kid, there was a toy vacumm molding machine. You put the plastic sheet over the heater, then flipped it over onto the a diecast tool, and pumped the little manual vacumm pump like crazy. This way you could make your own plastic airplanes and cars etc. This is what Fiber-Forge is doing, but with preshaped carbon fiber between two sheets (or multiple layers of this configuration) of thermo-plastic. When the pressure comes on, the sandwich of thermi-plastic and cabon fiber are compressed and the plastic flows through-out the fiber, making a composite material.

This process is cheaper for small run production (up to about 10 or 100 K part depending on the size of the part) than sheet metal stamping! Mostly due to the fact that you do not need 50 tons of iron, half of which is reciprocating up and down, to stamp out a part. Just a heater and a low pressure press. The tool does not have to be made from hardened steel (like in sheet metal stamping) either. Hardened steel is slow to machine and that costs money.

Because the matrix plastic is reprocessable, to recycle these composites only requires an oven with a nitrogen purge system. Heat up the part above melting point in an oxygen free atmosphere, and all the thermo-plastic matrix material drips, or can be rung out of the cabon fiber like a sponge.

Road Vehicle repair might be similar to body work, but more like boat repair, only at high temperature. Think about something like vacumm bagging, only at 400-500 F (polyimide film vacumm bag). Vacumm bagging is a common wood-working veneer application, boat building and repair techingue.

 

Whatever, I'm a strong advocate of Darwinism. The weak were meant to die. Humans are one of the very few species that help the weak, and the ones that haven't have been around a lot longer than we have.

I've had my airbags deployed once, and it was due to the stupidity of another. Had neither of our cars not had airbags I would probably have some bruises, and the moronic lady on a cell phone would probably have died, as well as the kid. If she hadn't been on the cell phone I doubt she would have willingly put her, assuming it's hers anyway, kid's life in jeopardy.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ May 15 2007, 05:15 PM) [snapback]442856[/snapback]</div>

OK. I'd watched quickly, so probably missed the parts (or had forgotten. I do a lot of that lately.) about the energy absorbing devices.

Dave M.

 

So basically this stuff is flexible carbon fiber? Instead of shattering on impact it bends? Interesting concept.

I take it the machines you are talking about are like the ones they use to make those plastic molds on Mythbusters. Place object on platform then have a big heated plastic sheet come down and suck out all the air?

I'm sure the "crumple zone" problems can be dealt with easily. I know they have those sidewall things in NASCAR and/or F-1 where they have sections of the wall that just kind of give in to absorb the blow, but they are easily replaceable and made of some kind of foam.

BTW, this does kind of suck because plastic is made from oil, right? I think the last thing we need is to use more oil, but if it does help FE then it may be worth it.

 

Apologies to the OP for this reply to his topic but it is something I cannot let fly:

"Whatever, I'm a strong advocate of Darwinism. The weak were meant to die. "

That's an illogical point of view. Maybe a caveman cannot grasp this,

BUT

Evolution "gave" most humans compassion because it's necessary for human society and survival. You are not advocating Darwinism, you are regurgitating clueless hogwash

 

Roll cages, neck devices, and five points could eliminate the need for many of todays safety devices, save weight in the process, and allow the construction of significantly lighter vehicles operating at higher speeds. The reason this doesn't happen is people generally like convenience, comfort, and the ability to pick up change off the floor of their cars while driving. Oh yea... They like being able to get in anout out easily too and using the back seats...