Large Scale Carbon Fiber Hybrid Composite Automotive Parts from Recycled Material

In recent years, many industries that heavily rely on composites have pushed to become more sustainable in their practices, including the wind energy, aerospace, and automotive industries. For the automotive industry, many composite materials utilized are thermoplastic-based composites. Thermoplastic composites offer the opportunity to be directly recycled back into existing parts through mechanical recycling and re-manufacturing. However, to date, there has been only a limited effort in incorporating recycled materials into large thermoplastic automotive parts and understanding the effects on performance. Here, we investigate the changes in performance and manufacturability of a large-scale carbon fiber (CF) thermoplastic hybrid composite part injection molded from i) virgin material, ii) 20% recycled material, and iii) 100% recycled material. The processing conditions were captured and analyzed to assess the ease and difficulty with manufacturing large automotive components from recycled material and a decrease in injection pressure was observed as recycled content increased. Additionally, the mechanical properties were characterized in several sections of the part to identify changes in the mechanical performance due to inclusion of recycled content. Previous data shows an increase in recycled content causes a decrease in mechanical performance, but the extent to which it decreases across sections of a large part is the focus of this study. Based on the results, we aim to elucidate the impact of utilizing recycled thermoplastic composite materials on the performance and manufacturability of large scale automotive parts to help recycled thermoplastic composites become more widely accepted by the industry.