Lightweight load floor with substantial renewable resource content

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Lightweight load floor with substantial renewable resource content

James, A. / Paolini, D. / Armstrong, B. / Katterloher, K. / Marsales, A.

The global requirement for reduced CO2 emissions and increased vehicle fuel economy is an important aspect of technology development in the transportation industry. Dow Automotive, Magna Exteriors and Interiors Corp worked together to develop new polyurethane (PU) based composites that enable novel lightweight structure through extensive use of environmentally friendly materials. The premise of this work was to addresses two significant challenges in the automotive industry: mass reduction and incorporation of renewable materials. The present work targets the automotive load floor application as a central focus. This application was selected based on its large size and general load bearing performance requirements which lend themselves to the use of composites technology. The paper reviews performance requirements for load floor applications and our efforts to meet those requirements with PU formulation and processing technology that make use of environmentally friendly materials. A life cycle analysis was completed to assess the carbon footprint of a PU composite in comparison to competing technologies and a strategy for further improvement of this result is discussed based on use of bio-derived feed stocks for PU chemicals.