Faurecia wins two awards for its Lightweight Solutions at the JEC World 2017 Innovation Awards
NAFILite™: offsetting environmental impact
Weight reduction is crucial to equipment suppliers and automakers who are seeking to curb emissions. A 10 kg reduction in vehicle weight is enough to cut CO2 emissions by 1 gram per kilometer.
Faurecia designed and developed its hemp fiber-based NAFILean™ and NAFILite™ materials to help achieve these goals. Hemp is an eco-friendly, non-food crop that requires no pesticides, fertilizers or irrigation.
NAFILite™ is a combination of NAFILean™ material and an injection (foaming) process used to expand the material through mold-opening technology.
Its stiff, microcellular (bubble) structure ensures much-improved performance and resistance. This requires less injected material, which leads to significant weight savings. NAFILite offers a 15% weight saving vs a market reference material and up to 30% weight saving vs the traditionally used materials for such parts. Made of renewable natural fibers and of polypropylene, it also gives an environmental impact reduction of up to 30%. Faurecia uses both NAFILite™ and NAFILean™ in manufacturing structural automotive parts such as instrument panels, door panels and center consoles. These parts are then covered with leather or fabric upholstery.
The all-French project is a result of the APM joint venture between Faurecia and Interval, a major French agricultural cooperative. This commitment to the environment has now been enshrined by the JEC Awards, confirming the company's determination to shape the future of mobility.
« Fast RTM », an all-French collaborative project
The "Fast RTM" project unveiled by the M2P research institute in June 2013 is the fruit of a collaborative initiative between Faurecia and key stakeholders in the French automotive industry.
Pinette P.E.I. (compact press and loading/unloading system), Compose (innovative tooling for mesh components), SISE (efficient heat regulation system), Chomarat (optimal reinforcing materials), Hexion & Arkema (reactive resins), and Renault, Faurecia & Hutchinson (integration and design) worked together to deliver solutions and develop a process to significantly reduce production time for mass manufacturing.
With its automated environment and state-of-the-art equipment, the Fast RTM platform can create composite parts in a record cycle time of just two minutes.
"We are very proud to have won the JEC Awards with IRT M2P for this innovation, which showcases French expertise," says Gilles Nedelec, senior composites expert at Faurecia. "The goal of the project was to develop a pilot line for mass production of automotive parts that could be scaled to other industries, such as aerospace, maritime, rail and even leisure.”
To ensure the traceability and quality of manufactured components, the platform is fully equipped to automate data collection, measure energy consumption and integrate control systems. As a result, the process could easily be adopted by other industries that need higher production rates, such as aerospace, rail transport and all other transport sectors.