ADVANTAGES OF USING LIGHTWEIGHT

MATERIALS ON AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

Josuee Martinez a
a
Materials Engineering I/Mechanics/Mechanical Engineering/ESPOCH
josuee_1904@outlook.com

I. INTRODUCTION “Designer navigates through an abstract problem

Humans need to expand their boundaries constantly,
as competitors by excellence we are in a constant race
which lead to the developing of human kind, as a result
of this competition we are able to find new solutions to
daily problems which focused on the developing of
new materials give us new solutions saving money,
resources, time, etc.
In the automotive area the range of work is really
vast because cars use lots of different materials,
companies use part of their budget to create new
models/concepts that use some new technologies that
might be applied in released models, but ¿what does
make a material useful on models that will be mass
produced?. As we know selecting a material is a
fundamental part of automotive design and it can lead
to companies with millions of profit and investment to
find new solutions applied to the manufacturing of
their models that we’ll lead into increasing their
incomes or depending on their strategies generating a
big loss in a matter of mass production models.
Selecting a material it’s a fundamental part of
designing, as we know every material has unique
characteristics that will have influence on how the
material behave so choosing the appropriate one
becomes vital, that’s why designers have to opt to
choose the material at the very beginning of design to
reduce failure, costs and time of manufacturing on
concept designs as we mentioned, this phase is when:
domain and employs various strategies to elaborate the
problem description” [1].
II. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
There are several aspects involved in choosing a
material over another, designer’s base their choices on
methods already proven that allow to accomplish some
objectives according to their investigation; to select a
material there are several methods, based on that there
is a process of multi-materials, that allows the
designers to test every possible material combination
until they find one that satisfies their needs and then
they get to be implemented in conceptual cars that will
be tested to obtain some information about its behave
so they can implement them on mass produced cars or
not, but the use of lightweight materials on automotive
industry is influenced by aspects like weight reduction,
capability of combining new materials, manufacturing
cost, recycling and viability of manufacturing just to
mention some of them, that’s why designers have
obtained, based on investigations, a matrix of materials
that can be used to obtain better performance based on
combining materials to take an advantage of some
characteristics that each individual material has to be
combined with another one that can perform better in
some components or another material or combination
depending on the component designed obtaining some
benefits.

TABLE I
MATRIX OF MATERIALS COMBINATION FOR CAR COMPONENTS [2].
 As we can see there are different combinations that can
be used on designing a car component but the selection has
to be based in the function of the product, materials have
mechanical properties and the requirements of the designed
component have to be satisfied its functionality, those
properties will have direct influence on the performance of
the product as it quality, Chiner [3], has proposed five steps
that can be taken to make a decision when it comes to
material selection:
 Clarity of the design model,
 Evaluation of material properties,
 Selection of material candidate,
 Evaluation and judgment for optimal solution,
 Proof checks.
Lately the environmental part plays a big role so
components have also to be sustainable and create the less
environmental impact as possible becoming the material
selection a multi-criteria decision, higher recyclability will
make the product more durable preserving natural resources
that’s why now automotive regulation organisms impose
higher recycling ratio which means using fewer materials
with the objective of creating easy disassembled models.
There are single material solutions or alloys as we saw on
the matrix, single material selection is wider because there
are already researches made that allow designers to optimize
the design, allowing them to maximize its performance and
some objectives that they can propose themselves with this
new component but mainly profits, heat management, time
of manufacturing, performance, environmental impact and
quantity of material are the most important ones so that’s
where automotive industry is focused.
As the main concern its lightweight materials we can see
in our matrix that Magnesium alloys have the best index due
to its low density and high resistance, which combined in
one only material or placed in layers can create chassis
structures that offer corrosion protection and impact
resistance, weight reduction objective is 100% focused on
fuel efficiency, high strength steels, aluminum and mostly
polymers are used to reduce a significant amount of weight
but the possibility of combining Magnesium and alloys
reduce weight in substantial numbers although Magnesium
is used in the automotive industry in die castings, housings,
etc. Magnesium reduces about 36% weight per unit volume
than aluminum and 78% than iron also when alloyed Mg has
the best strength to weight ratio of metals known, reduce
weight and CO2, but strategies used to date are way apart
from material modification, things as downsizing including
aerodynamically modifications but not material
modification that allows weight reduction on a molecular
level, all the designing efforts are made to improve fuel
efficiency and emission reduction, when it comes to
material improvement changes the most common it’s a
switch from iron to high strength steel, also iron and steel to
aluminum and plastics causing a weight reduction of 15 to
20% in some cases [4].
Mg can be found in vast quantities at least is found on
seawater but due to its low percentage 0.13% making it a
virtual big material supply, besides that Mg has a great
recycling ratio, part of the material development is testing
different combinations and Mg properties as light weight,
strength and average superior ductility makes this kind of
alloys an interesting option in fields like automotive and
aerospace components. This type of new alloys has high
temperature properties and automotive applications require
ductility to absorb energy in collisions, hit absorption is
crucial in accidents which can be raised using alloys
achieving its optimization, other components require some
different characteristics like higher strength and ductility
therefore most of cars parts are made from materials of the
matrix we talked previously and they are divided in three
parts:
 Body
 Power train
 Chassis
. WEIGHT REDUCTION BY COMBINATING
Figure 1: Applications of Mg alloys in motor vehicles. [4]
BODY
This is the larger group and it’s about 40% of total mass
in most of cases, steel is the most used when it comes to
structural parts, mechanisms are mainly made with metals
but combined with plastics such as low stressed housings,
Mg can be used on primary structural parts like protection
jail, sit frames are also components where Mg is already in
use especially in high performance models (500/10.000
units/year) increasing Mg usage in automotive, when it
comes to body also Mg sheet can be a good compliment but
that requires a huge economical expense to realize a high
volume heat forming process.
POWER TRAIN
Engine and transmission system are combination of
assemblies and tons of individual components, Magnesium
can replace some iron and aluminum in some housings and
covers but magnesium doesn’t have creep resistance of
aluminum that’s why it can’t be used in fundamental parts
like the block and the head, transmission system works at
lower temperatures this meaning that magnesium can
replace aluminum in massive main housings, mg housings
are already used in transfer cases, opportunities of including
mg in power train components are really low due to its high
temperature exposure.
CHASSIS
Chassis has diversity of components as diverse
manufacturing materials, in here mechanisms are simple and
there are also structural components, we can find mostly
iron and steel, components with structural function are made
by steel while those that are involved in mechanical
functions have wider range of materials, Al is the most used
and it could be replaced by Mg specially in unstrung parts
where low mass is crucial, wheels are the most common
type of Mg use and development of a competitive
production process based on welded/stamped components
would enable a wide range of usage.
Mg alloys have two disadvantages in automotive
applications:
 Low high temperature strength
 Poor corrosion resistance
High purity alloys improve corrosion problem improving it
but doesn’t change the galvanic problem if Mg is in contact
with another metal and an electrolyte, the low heat
resistance is also a serious problem especially in high
demand applications (power train). Low creep resistance,
high thermal expansion coefficient, low young modulus,
insufficient ductility and crash energy consumption, low
fatigue stability, etc. are aspects where alloys have to
overcome with new technique/process developments.
III. CONCLUSIONS
TABLE II
MAGNESIUMWITH OTHER MATERIALS [5]
As we can see according to table II Mg combination
allows weight reduction (about 92.51%) in some cases
which translated into all car components (40% for body)
gives us an approximate reduction of 37% in body, which
transformed into total weight sees about 0.65tons of weight
reduction (in a 1.75tons car) allowing it to consume less
energy and fuel emissions preserving ozone cape, also Mg
addition advantages are easy recycling processes obtaining
as much recycled material as you can get from any other car
components material, metals can be melted and reused and
as Mg has lower heating/melting points the recyclable time
gets reduced besides the energy usage to do it.
Weight reduction in cars will provide a new dimension to
design and concepts however there are not that much
advantages on it how things are at the moment that’s due to
its hard switch into mass produced cars when profits are
important and also safety but in exclusive models we can
ensure that new technologies as Mg alloys are already being
used but with the price raise that it comes with, as long as
cars are usable with current materials and specifications
there are not much improvements we normal car users can
experience at least in a short period of time, we can ensure
that in future car design will be based on reducing weight
without losing its performance but now we can’t as we see
in competition cars weight is a huge factor but in our cases
we don’t drive for winning we drive for commodities that it
brings we also have to ask ourselves ¿do I want a fast car or
a safe car? When most of us need a safe ride that can
perform on a safe speed range and when it’s involved in a
collision is able to keep us safes and so the ones that are
with us, ¿are we willing to sacrifice commodities and safety
for speed?, I’m 100% sure we won’t.

IV. REFERENCES

[1] Ermolaeva NS, Kaveline KG, Spoormaker JL. ‘Material selection

combined with optimal structural design: concept and some results’.
Mater Des 2002; 23:459–70.
[2] Castro MB, Remmerswaal JAM, Brezet JC, van Schaik A, Reuter
MA. ‘A simulation model of the comminution–liberation of recycling
streams: relationships between product design and the liberation of
materials during recycling’. Int J Miner Process 2005; 75(3–4):255–
81.
[3] Chiner M.’ Planning of expert system in material selection’. Mater
Des 1988; 9:195–203.
[4] Automotive uses of Magnesium alloys, Total Materia, viewed 18
April 2017, <http://www.totalmateria.com/page.aspx?ID=Check
Article&site=ktn&NM=246>
[5] Sakundarini, N., Taha, Z., Abul-Rashid, S & Raja Ghazila, A. 2013,
‘Optimal multi-material selection for lightweight design of
automotive body assembly incorporating recyclability’, Materials and
design, vol. 50, no. , pp. 846-857.