New BM­WK pro­ject: "Pro­cess and Tech­no­logy De­vel­op­ment for the Pro­duc­tion of an In­nov­at­ive Box Body Floor As­sembly in In­teg­ral Light­weight Con­struc­tion"

On June 1, 2021, the research project "Process and Technology Development for the Production of an Innovative Box Body Floor Assembly in Integral Lightweight Construction", funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in the "Technology Transfer Program for Lightweight Construction", was launched. Over a project duration of two years, the project volume amounts to approx. 0.8 million euros. The funding program is coordinated by Project Management Jülich (PTJ).

The background to the HyDuty research project is that current studies on the development of courier, express and parcel (CEP) services clearly show that national and international shipment volumes have risen sharply in recent years and continue to rise sharply. Since the year 2000, the development of delivery traffic has recorded an increase in shipment volume of almost 100 percent. The further average increases up to the year 2023 is forecast at a good 5 percent per year. The number of shipments will thus grow by around 750 million units within the next four years, which corresponds to an absolute shipment volume of more than 4.4 billion shipments [1].

Also in view of current pandemic-related changes in consumer purchasing behavior, it is expected that shipment volumes will continue to rise in the future. To cope with the growing volume of shipments, significantly more delivery vehicles will have to be used. In addition to high investments in the CEP sector, however, the increasing volume of traffic also leads to greater strain on the infrastructure in inner-city traffic. This in turn results in longer idle times for all road users as well as increased emissions of greenhouse gases, which are crucial to climate change. For this reason, it is a necessary consequence to reduce the emission of climate-damaging combustion gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). In modern vehicle construction, lightweight design is considered one of the most important key technologies for reducing environmentally harmful CO2 emissions as required by the EU [2].

Two thirds of the vehicle fleet of courier, express and parcel services consists of light commercial vehicles. These include commercial vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of up to 3.5 tons [3]. Current floor assemblies for bodies of these light commercial vehicles consist of numerous individual parts, which entails many manufacturing and assembly steps. This is not only time-consuming but also cost-intensive. Furthermore, the lightweight potential of such bodies is limited by pure further development of existing designs and without a new and systemic development approach. In order to address the objectives shown in the figure, this project aims to develop technologies and processes with which the floor assemblies of box bodies for light commercial vehicles can be manufactured from materials not commonly used in this area, subdivided into modules in an integral design, thus implementing a technology- and process-related paradigm shift.

The aim of this project is to develop processes and technologies for the processing of glass fiber-reinforced plastics and hybrid material combinations on an application-specific basis. These technologies will be applied and demonstrated in the course of the project by manufacturing a modular integral lightweight floor, assembling it on a test carrier and finally validating it by means of tests on the demonstrator.

Project partners:

• Brummelte & Lienen Werkzeugbau GmbH
• Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Dresden, Bereich Nutzfahrzeugtechnik
• LiA Engineering GmbH
• Meiners 3D Solutions GmbH
• Universität Paderborn, Lehrstuhl für Leichtbau im Automobil (LiA)
• RAPID Leichtbau GmbH (assoziiert)

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