B0201 - Advanced Manufacturing Technologies for Automotive Industry

Learning outcomes

The students will learn how to choose the best production processes for lightweight and advanced metal, polymer and composite material. They will learn how to prepare and optimize efficient manufacturing cycles, as well as how to ensure that those technologies are compatible with the planned requirements of final products. To emphasize the impact of manufacturing process parameters on product performance, case studies, laboratory and industry applications will be examined. For process development and optimization, software tools (such as FEM and CAE) will be introduced.

Course contents

Metal materials

• Introduction:
  • Electric transition in mobility.
  • Materials and process manufacturing
  • Battery fabrications

• Laser Manufacturing processes for battery fabrication
  • Fundamentals of lasers
  • Materials in battery fabrication
  • Laser weldings ad cuttings in battery fabrication
    
  
  
• FLOW3D
  • How to use FLOW3D for laser welding simulations
  • Case studies for battery fabrication
  • Simulation and process optimization

• Composite materials

  -Basics of Structure Thermoplastic and Thermosetting polymers compared to Metals (2 hours);

  -Proprieties of polymer and reinforced polymers with powders, short and long fibers (2 hours);

  -TECHNOLOGIES OF THERMOPLASTIC POLYMERS (6 hours):

• injection molding,
• extrusion,
• blow molding,
• stretch blow molding,
• thermoforming,
• press molding

description of the technologies, process parameters, case studies

-TECHNOLOGIES OF THERMOSETTING POLYMERS AND COMPOSITE MATERIALS (20 hours):

-Properties of thermosetting resins

-Manufacturing of glass, carbon and aramidic fibers;

-From fibers to textiles: UD tapes and UD fabrics, multiaxial fabrics, classification of fabrics (styles, weight, proprieties);

-properties of pre-pregs,

-proprieties of cores and their application;

-Technologies for thermosetting composites:

• Hand layup,
• Vacuum Bagging,
• Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) and variants (VARTM, VARI, HP-RTM, etc),
• Pre-preg and Autoclave,
• Pre-preg press Molding (PCM),
• Short fiber press Molding (SMC),
• Filament winding.

description of the technologies, process parameters, production rates, product proprieties, case studies.

Teaching methods

Powerpoint presentations, slides and insights on the blackboard.

Exercises and discussion of industrial cases

Assessment methods

For the Part 1 (Metal materials) the assessment consists is the presentation of a case study optimized using FLOW3D.

For the Part 2 (Composite materials): Written test with open questions and quiz.

The final mark is the average of the marks obtained in the 2 parts.

Teaching tools

Slides and textbook

Office hours

See the website of Alessandro Fortunato

See the website of Luca Raimondi