ABS/Natural Fiber Composites for Automotive Interiors application

초록

Replacement of petroleum-based plastics with natural fiber for automotive interior applications could contribute greatly to the automotive manufacturers' final goal ofweight and cost reduction. A shift from petroleum-based synthetic plastics to renewable resources based substances such as natural fibers is more and more demanding for automotive materials to meet the international regulations and to resolve environmental issues. In this research, natural fiber was compounded with ASS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer) together with other additives to prepare the bio-composites in order to substitute ASS-based automotive interior materials. Effect of natural fiber and additives compositions was explored for tensile strength, flexural strength, impact strength and, heat distortion temperature of the resulting composites. The physical properties of thus prepared ABS/natural fiber composites met the criteria that were required for the existing ABS-based automotive interior materials. Moreover, the weight of the bio-composites was about 30% lighter than that of the ASS-based automotive interior materials .