Abstract

The transport sector has exerted and continue to be the driving force for the development of new materials and lightweigth solutions. The present study focuses on the work developed in a recently completed European project (CARBODIN https://carbodin.eu/) where one of the main objectives is to develop innovative and affordable solutions for advanced car body shells. Composite materials appear to be one of the most promising candidates to attain these ambitious targets. However, to overcome the cost barrier as well as meet additional railway requirements, new strategies such as process integration and novel manufacturing routes are needed, which will offer a cost-effective industrial solution. The case study corresponds to a C-Groove insert used as an anchoring point to hang passenger seats off the car body side walls, to fix Interior Panels or luggage racks. To improve this design, a trendsetting design was developed to integrate composite C-Grooves to Composite sidewalls. This work will display the details of such design as well as the optimal manufacturing strategy to achieve it. An out of autoclave (OoA) manufacturing process was assisted through different monitoring technologies such as resin arrival sensors and thermography to ensure high quality components. Additionally, a multi-material approach based on 3D printed technologies has been tackled. A thorough analysis of the joint has been performed and different integration approaches have been explored by designing co-cured and co-bonded manufacturing stages. Finally, several demonstrators have been made and tested to define the most promising integration approach and scaling up yet again to a larger demonstrator.