The Ontario BioCar Initiative represented a partnership between the automotive industry and the public sector, aimed at accelerating the use of biomass in automotive materials.
The IDIR BioCar Research Team, comprising the Universities of Guelph, Toronto, Waterloo, and Windsor, was granted $5.9M from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, $5.9M matching institutional funds, and $5.9M from 12 private sector partners. Through this public and private sector partnership, we established a globally leading initiative to bring products from the field and forest to the highway. With the focus on the replacement of petroleum-based products by biochemicals and high content bio-fibre materials, the outcomes of this research will have a significant, positive effect on the profitability of Ontario farming and Ontario forestry, and it will create a sustainable, competitive edge for the Ontario automotive value chain.
The BioCar Initiative was a four-year long project focused on the reduction of the cost of automotive bio-products, while maintaining or improving value. To this end, we established an Inter-institutional Research Team tasked to address constraints to achieving this goal at every step of bio-product production.
The benefits of a new biomaterials industry to Ontario agriculture include crop diversification and increased on-farm processing for higher-value commodities. Ontario manufacturers will benefit from a reliable, local supply of renewable feedstocks for materials which consume less energy to produce, are not petroleum-based, and are amenable to recycling. Crop-based materials have the potential to not only enhance the value of existing products, but also to give rise to entirely new products and industries.
The Team at the IDIR performs final support to the entire initiative by developing improved methods for the fastening of bio-products to existing plastic and metal surfaces and by predicting the impact performance of bio-composites in assembled automobiles through ultra-sound analysis.
The research activities were focused on the following areas:
- Evaluation of the green composites’ mechanical properties aimed to optimize the composite formulation;
- Non-destructive characterization of the bio-composites, defects detection, and details integrity analysis;
- Characterization and control of the composite structure and natural fiber/matrix interface;
- Optimization of the composites’ fabrication process;
- Evaluation of the composites’ mechanical performance, degradability and durability;
- Prediction of the material performance in assembled automobiles through non-destructive techniques and numerical modelling efforts.
The IDIR Team examined, nondestructively, new composites’ structures with use of Raman spectroscopy, acoustic and electron microscopy, thermography, and thermal and mechanical analysis, and compared these results with destructive tests. Combined together, these techniques provided precise evaluation of the important composite parameters and allow us to establish the correlation between the composite material’s structure and its mechanical performance, as well as to deepen our understanding of failure causes for bio-composites. We also investigate the effect of the uniformity of fibre phase distribution, the fibre’s content, its orientation, and its interaction with the matrix on the overall mechanical performance of the composite.
The research team performs an assessment of the final stages of the new materials development by providing characterization of the new composites in terms of durability and degradability, and mechanical behavior under deformations. This is extremely important, as successful product development may fail unless we can show that the products can be acceptably and cost-effectively incorporated into motor vehicles using existing assembly processes. With existing degradation test equipment, the degradation tests for new materials are performed to ensure they meet today’s industry requirements. We analyze changes of the physico-mechanical composite properties and material integrity during environment impact, (light, ultraviolet, temperature, and humidity), stress, and vibration influence.
Our work on this project is designed to go beyond simply testing individual product components. One of the goals of the project is to develop and manufacture a full-size prototype of automotive components for robustness analysis in the real automotive environment. Our team focuses on the commercial delivery of acceptable auto parts composed of natural fibre composites by developing clear standards and protocols for acceptable assembly within projected assembly modules. This aspect of the project is extremely important for industrial partners to ensure that new products can be acceptably and cost-effectively incorporated into vehicles using existing assembly processes.