Graphene uses to enhance car parts and components
Graphene uses to enhance car parts and components
Car parts and components made with graphene will be stronger, lighter and could be environment-friendly and help reduce CO2 emissions and make vehicles safer, nearly a decade later, efforts to fabricate practical graphene composites continue apace, but the technology is still in its infancy.
Graphene uses to enhance car parts and components and keep the composite material as it is composed of carbon fibre or glass fibre the idea lay in enhancing the polymer characterisation by embedding graphene in certain ways inside the polymer the polymer will be enhanced by being stronger and lighter.
This is the claim of Sunderland University’s Prof Ahmed Elmarakbi, who is leading a project with European partners to develop lighter, stronger, and more energy-efficient vehicles using graphene.
This is the claim of Sunderland University’s Prof Ahmed Elmarakbi, who is leading a project with European partners to develop lighter, stronger, and more energy-efficient vehicles using graphene.
Prof Ahmed Elmarakbi, from Sunderland’s Department of Computing, Engineering and Technology, said the iGCAuto project would achieve this by producing a new type of composite material using a polymer enhanced with graphene.
Recently, however, a pioneering project began to develop novel graphene-based nanocomposites that one day could truly revolutionize the automotive industry. The 18-month, $1.1-million iGCAuto research collaborative, which is funded by the European Union’s 10-year, billion-euro Graphene Flagship programme, aims to make high-performance graphene composites that could reduce the weight of car structures by one-third or more.
They plan to develop a new way to use graphene to enhance polymer composites that we hope can save as much as 30% to 50% in automotive structural weight the chassis and body in white compared to today’s steel cars, and researchers expect in five or six years that improvement could even reach 70%.
The resulting components could not only lessen weight but also could feature substantially thinner cross sections as well.
The graphene-based material will be investigated, modeled, and designed to provide improved strength, dimensional stability, thermal behavior, and flame retardance. Fewer smoke emissions is another goal, as is as superior durability properties that would boost vehicle and occupant safety.
The research team plans to exploit a novel nanocatalyst and unique graphene-based nanocomposite materials that were developed by Egyptian scientist Sherif El-Safty, Chief Researcher at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science, Elkmarakbi said. “Although we’re at a very early stage and still have to fully prove the concept, I am growing more confident that our collaboration will be fruitful,” Elmarakbi said.
El-Safty will not directly take part in this work, but will continue working separately on similar projects.
How Graphene makes cars more economical, safety and environment-friendly ?!
Graphene car components can reduce the overall weight of a vehicle and the amount of fuel required to operate it, However, such light weighting usually compromises vehicle and occupant safety.
Due to the trade-off between light vehicles and safety standards, a new direction of light weighting should be adopted to minimise the collision mitigation and improve crash worthiness,’ he said. ‘Our materials will provide benefits such as improved strength, dimensional stability, superior durability, and enhance energy absorption capabilities, yet remain super light and graphene became the ideal material to get all that.
