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      Influence of Polymer Composites and Memory Foam on Energy Absorption in Vehicle Application

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          Abstract

          The automotive industry is one of the biggest consumers of polymer composites. Aside from good mechanical properties, polymer composites have low mass, which positively affects the overall vehicle weight reduction and improves energy efficiency. Although polymer composites are used in various vehicle components, this paper focused on the application in vehicle bumper production. Two different composite plates with hybrid fiber layup were made; the first plate with a combination of glass and carbon fibers and the second with carbon and aramid. For comparison, and as a cheaper variant, a third plate was made only with glass fibers. In the first two plates, epoxy resin was used as the matrix, while in the third plate, polyester resin was used. Polyurethane memory foams of different densities (60, 80, 100 kg/m 3) and thicknesses (10, 15, 20 mm) were used as impact force energy absorbers. With the factorial design of experiments, it was found that the thickness of the memory foam was the main influence factor. Without the use of memory foam, the hybrid composite, made of glass and carbon fibers, showed the highest energy absorption, while with the use of foam, the highest energy absorption was achieved with the glass fiber composite. Without the memory foam, the impact force measured on the glass/carbon hybrid composite was 9319.11 ± 93.18 N. Minimum impact force to the amount of 5143.19 ± 237.65 N was measured when the glass fiber composite plate was combined with the memory foam. When using memory foam, the impact force was reduced by 30–48%, depending on the type of composite used.

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          Most cited references48

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          Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites: Manufacturing, Properties, and Applications

          Composites have been found to be the most promising and discerning material available in this century. Presently, composites reinforced with fibers of synthetic or natural materials are gaining more importance as demands for lightweight materials with high strength for specific applications are growing in the market. Fiber-reinforced polymer composite offers not only high strength to weight ratio, but also reveals exceptional properties such as high durability; stiffness; damping property; flexural strength; and resistance to corrosion, wear, impact, and fire. These wide ranges of diverse features have led composite materials to find applications in mechanical, construction, aerospace, automobile, biomedical, marine, and many other manufacturing industries. Performance of composite materials predominantly depends on their constituent elements and manufacturing techniques, therefore, functional properties of various fibers available worldwide, their classifications, and the manufacturing techniques used to fabricate the composite materials need to be studied in order to figure out the optimized characteristic of the material for the desired application. An overview of a diverse range of fibers, their properties, functionality, classification, and various fiber composite manufacturing techniques is presented to discover the optimized fiber-reinforced composite material for significant applications. Their exceptional performance in the numerous fields of applications have made fiber-reinforced composite materials a promising alternative over solitary metals or alloys.
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            Characterization of polymeric structural foams under compressive impact loading by means of energy-absorption diagram

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              Mechanical properties of hybrid kenaf/glass reinforced epoxy composite for passenger car bumper beam

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Polymers (Basel)
                Polymers (Basel)
                polymers
                Polymers
                MDPI
                2073-4360
                27 May 2020
                June 2020
                : 12
                : 6
                : 1222
                Affiliations
                Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb, Ivana Lucica 5, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia; jelena_petrusa@ 123456hotmail.com (J.P.); zoran.domitran@ 123456fsb.hr (Z.D.)
                Author notes
                Article
                polymers-12-01222
                10.3390/polym12061222
                7361981
                32471178
                3616516a-66e4-4849-b85f-51cb7d8412f4
                © 2020 by the authors.

                Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                : 29 April 2020
                : 23 May 2020
                Categories
                Article

                automotive industry,energy absorption,hybrid composites,memory foam

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