Japan develops new polymer materials to reduce vehicle weight by half

Japanese researchers from industry, academia, and the government are developing stronger and lighter materials for auto parts such as car bodies, wheels, and windows. The core of research and development is to make full use of polymer materials, that is, materials with plastic as the main constituent element, and the purpose is to use such materials to reduce the weight of automobiles by half and accelerate the popularity of electric vehicles.

Professor Kozo Ito of the University of Tokyo is leading the project with the support of the ImPACT project (launched in 2014) in Cabinet Office. Its research team plans to launch a car made of high-performance polymer materials that has never been seen so far in September.

Both natural and synthetic polymer materials are composed of tiny molecular chains and are often found in everyday products, including resins made of plastics and films, rubber in tires, and earthquake damping for buildings Device. Today's cars are made of heavy materials such as steel and glass. Such parts are durable and have increased safety, but they limit fuel efficiency. Plastic is lighter, but more fragile. If you can design a material with the same strength as steel, but with a lighter weight, you can greatly increase the cruising range of the car.

One area where this material can be used is in car windows. Researchers of the Sumitomo Chemical company team led by Tatsuya Kasahara are studying plastics, replacing metal and glass used in car windows, to greatly reduce the weight of the car. The team's goal is to make transparent plastics stronger than glass for windshields.

Tire manufacturer Bridgestone is also producing more durable rubber, making tires lighter and making related progress. At the same time, industrial textile manufacturer Toray Industries (Toray Industries) is also developing new technologies to mix resins with polyrotaxane materials to improve the strength of plastics, which can increase the tension of plastics by 8 times and the bending strength by 50 times. If this technology is applied to glass fiber, it can be used not only to produce explosion-proof glass, but also to be used in combination with carbon fiber to make a car body frame, reduce the weight of the car, and improve its durability.

The prototype is expected to be launched in September, due to the use of tough polymer materials, including the use of carbon fiber reinforced plastics in the body panels, the car is expected to be 38% lighter than existing models. If the same model is made of iron and glass, the weight is 1333 kg, while the production of new materials will be only 832 kg. The biggest obstacle to the application of new polymer materials to ordinary cars is high cost. The price of new polymer materials is several times that of traditional materials.

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