Ford Technical Leader David Wagner: Composites “Poised for a Breakthrough”

For decades, the composites industry has been searching for ways to gain traction in the mainstream automotive market. Four years ago, the EPA announced a fuel economy standard of 54.5 mpg for automakers to reach by 2025, which had led to more OEMs looking wherever they can make all types of vehicles lighter. Composites have made strides in recent years, with major applications including the BMW i3, the Volkswagen XL1, and recently the 2017 Honda Ridgeline. Another OEM, Ford, has also been pushing the envelope with composites. Last year, it became the first major automaker to mass-produce carbon fiber wheels for a production vehicle, and its supercar, the Ford GT, is also chock full of carbon fiber. Composites Manufacturing recently spoke with David Wagner, the technical leader for lightweight vehicle design at Ford, to get his thoughts on the current state of composites in automotive. Q: Please describe what you do at Ford as the company’s technical leader for lightweight vehicle design. A: I'm in the Research & Advanced Engineering organization, and our team works on ideas for vehicles that are typically beyond the immediate cycle plan. I do work on lightweight body and chassis ideas that could be included in future vehicle plans. In other words, a lot of things I can't quite talk to you about yet. Q: How do you view the current state of composites in the automotive industry? A: It's poised for a breakthrough. With the work that BMW and a couple of others are doing, there's initial work out there that makes it look very attractive. Carbon fiber is the essential element of our Ford GT supercar. All of the automotive industry has been working on carbon fiber for lots of years on the low-volume specialty vehicles, and it's getting closer and closer to making the breakthrough into high-volume, regular series production. Certainly the work BMW has done with the 7 series is something we're watching with great interest. In our research and development exercises, this is all very, very interesting. Q: You mention the Ford GT. The other major application that comes to mind regarding Ford is the mass production of carbon fiber wheels for the GT350R Mustang, which Ford wrote "Using carbon fiber reduced the overall vehicle weight by 60 pounds compared to aluminum." So what are your thoughts for the potential CFRP wheels throughout the entire automotive industry?  A: The way the wheels are made are right for the GT350R. The high-volume implications aren't clear yet. It's not viable at a mass production level yet because of both cost and the amount of time it takes to make the wheels. [However], the wheels are a great opportunity for carbon fiber. It has the direct benefit of reducing weight, but it also has an additional benefit of reducing the rotating mass and the rotational inertia [of wheels]. That gives you a ride and handling and a steering improvement, as well as an acceleration improvement. Because it doesn't take as much energy to spin up the wheels, you get an additional benefit when you take the weight out of those rotating parts. That's one of the reasons it was exciting to do the wheels [with carbon fiber] as opposed to non-moving parts. Q: What other applications for composites do you see on the horizon for composites at Ford?  A:  Ford has a joint development agreement with DowAksa to develop low-cost carbon fiber. There are a number of parts that we're looking at with the DowAksa carbon fiber. I can't get into specifics but we're working on where we can gets lots of weight out of cars. Q: What hurdles does the composites industry need to overcome for OEMs such as Ford to increase their use of GFRP and CFRP?  A: On the carbon fiber front, there are a number of cost hurdles, especially the cost of the carbon fiber raw material. For the general composites industry looking at all of the different mixes [of materials], right now the chemistry system is very delicate between making sure that the sizing on the fibers likes the resin system, and that the resin system and the fibers work together seamlessly. And then there's the manufacturing time that results in [higher] cost. A lot of the aerospace parts are autoclaved, which is high pressure and high temperature for hours. For high-volume automotive parts, the manufacturing challenges of carbon fiber and glass composites are often difficult reach the kind of cycle times (parts per hour) from one set of tools that compare to stamping of steel or aluminum, where we get a part every 6-10 seconds. That's not the cure time on these composites. So there's been some chemistry work that's been going on, and all of the resin companies and the composites industry has been making great strides in this area to reduce the cycle time and the cure time for the parts. That's the next big hurdle, but there's been lots of work in that and we anticipate future improvements. I doubt it'll get down to the part speeds of a steel stamping press, but it can get to some very high volume production. Q: What other challenges are you looking to composite manufacturers to help you address?  A: There are other challenges deep in the chemistry [of composites], which is not my forte, about the robustness for high and low temperature. There's also impact resistance. The surface of the composite has to be resistant to impact and to different environmental factors and different fluids that [composites] would be exposed to. Clearly if you're on the interior, like a composite seat frame, you're probably not going to see brake fluid or antifreeze dumped on the inside of a seat frame. With any parts in the engine compartment, the composites have to be robust against all of the different against all of the automotive fluids that we would anticipate, especially for any exterior or chassis parts. There's a lot of magic chemistry there that's well beyond me. We can't have composites degrading or changing their performance if someone spills engine oil on them. Q: How do you think the use of composites will change over the next five years in the automotive industry?  A: We're going to see lots more of [composites]. We're going to see [more] structural composites. We use various polymer and plastic systems throughout our vehicles now. There's filled and unfilled interior parts and exterior parts. Those are all the non-structural or semi-structural kinds of things that have to hold themselves up, but they don't add to the durability or the stiffness of the vehicles. So those are going to grow and the use of polymer composites is going to grow. It's really a matter of cost and vehicle need that will determine how many parts on which vehicles being manufactured with composites. Q: Aside from using composites, how are OEMs such as Ford achieving lightweighting goals?  A: We have the aluminum F-150, with the high-strength steel frame and the aluminum body. So that's where we have been. Those are tools that we are bringing to bear as appropriate as we launch new vehicles with what our customer needs are and what the fuel economy requirements are. Q: What was your first car? A: Oh my gosh! The first car that I bought was a Pontiac T1000 back in 1981.