B&W presents composite material research project HIVOCOMP at EUCAR Conference

Bax & Willems partner Menno van Rijn had the chance to present the HIVOCOMP at the EUCAR reception and conference in 8-9 November 2011 in Brussels.

Over two hundred representatives of the European automotive industry and R&D community and of the European Commission attended the presentation. You can find the EUCAR poster for the project here.

The EC-funded research project HIVOCOMP, which started late 2010 and is coordinated by Prof. Ignaas Verpoest of KU Leuven, focuses on advancing the state-of-the-art of composite materials technology to bring it closer to mass-production for automotive applications.

After years of research and development, composites in automotive are coming closer to large-volume car production, as witnessed for example in the pending BMW-i series. The case for high-performance automotive plastics makes sense in particularly in future electric cars reaching high market volumes, where an ultra light body directly translates to an increased driving range, thus making them more appealing to customers.

HIVOCOMP focuses on developing two material systems that show unique promise for cost-effective high-volume production of carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) parts: advanced polyurethane (PU) thermoset matrix materials and thermoplastic PPSOE-based and PA6-based self-reinforced polymer composites.

Project partners include three large European automotive OEMs (VW, Daimler, CRF), suitcase manufacturer Samsonite, leading composite material manufacturers suppliers and six knowledge institutes represent the cutting edge of composite materials research in Europe.

Based on its track record in the fields automotive and composite R&D, B&W actively contributes as partner managing the project and assuring results meet the project’s objective to make a strong contribution to the uptake of structural composites in the automotive sector.

HIVOCOMP (Advanced materials enabling high-volume road transport applications of lightweight structural Composite parts) is a 4-year R&D project funded under the 7th Framework Programme.

For more information about the project, please visit www.hivocomp.eu and/or contact Harilaos Vasiliadis of B&W at h.vasiliadis @ bwcv.es