NCMS Grid Cell Makes Way for Automotive Materials 

This Tuesday, the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) celebrated the launch of its first Grid Cell Innovation Center in Michigan, designed to bring industry and academia together with the goal of integrating modeling and simulation into the product lifecycle.

This center, which will build upon NCMS’ previous work with the Lightweight Automotive Materials Program (LAMP), is dedicated to using modeling and simulation advance composite materials that have yet to enter the automotive ring.

To discuss LAMP and the work we can expect to see out of the Grid Cell, we spoke with Rich Curless of FIVES, a French company that designs carbon composite manufacturing equipment for the aerospace industry. With the support of LAMP's collaborative projects, FIVES went from creating an aircraft fuselage from 3,000 parts all the way down to two, and was interested in applying this work to automotive manufacturing. But in spite of the leap that FIVES made for aerospace, their work was less than convincing for members of the automotive industry.

“There was a little bit of 'Wow, that's a really nice technology, but it's too expensive; we'll never see that in the automotive industry,'" Curless recalled of his conversations with automotive companies.

But beyond skepticism, the greater issue that FIVES ran into was that automakers rely on production cycles that run laps around those for aerospace. As opposed to the five days required to produce a fuselage with carbon composites, automakers demand production times no longer than two minutes.

Meanwhile, Gary Lownsdale of Plasan Carbon Composites, another LAMP participant, has also been pushing to bring carbon composites to the automotive industry, but not in the form you may expect. You might recognize Plasan's work if you've seen the mine crew vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan, which must be not only resistant to explosives, but need to be highly maneuverable as well.

Through LAMP, Plasan found that by shrinking the autoclave, five key materials along with nitrogen could all be removed from the heating process, cutting process costs, time, and allowing a greater degree of control than a larger machine could offer.

Processing time was Plasan's first area of attack, which whittled curing time to six minutes and cycle time to 17. But their ultimate goal, which they hope to meet through the Grid Cell, is to reach the two-minute goal to roll 100,000 vehicle sets off the assembly line each year.