Capabilities of additive manufacturing technologies (AMT) in the validation of the automotive cockpit

Abstract

In the validation of the automotive cockpit the cockpit’s functional parts are submitted to various hardware tests in order to ensure the high quality of the parts. For automotive applications the validation by hardware tests can only be started very late in the development process since the tools for injection molding needed for series production are available only very late in the automotive development process. This is why it would be advantageous, to be able to submit AMT-parts to these validation hardware tests and to suggest from the behaviour of the AMT-parts to the behaviour of the series parts. Basic requirement for this is the similarity of the properties of the AMT-parts and the series parts. Material characterization at series and AMT-materials has shown that there are material properties which agree quite well, e.g. Young’s Modulus at room temperature or tensile strength. But there are also material properties where the discrepancy between AMT-materials and conventional materials is significant, for example impact strength and Young’s Modulus at high temperatures.