General Motors (GM) has made the world’s first curved pultruded carbon fibre bumper beam of the new 2020 mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette Stingray with Vectorply carbon non-crimp fabrics. The multi-hollow bumper beam has garnered national attention of its own within the composites industry. Vectorply makes reinforcement fabrics for composite applications.

The carbon bumper beam has been nominated for the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) automotive process, assembly and enabling technologies award and been featured in numerous composite and automotive publications, according to a press release by the company.

The first production model Corvettes will be available early 2020, but development for the crucially important carbon bumper beam began many years ago. In 2014, Vectorply joined forces with Shape to begin developing specialised carbon fabrics and laminate schedules for this vital part. Initially, Vectorply’s sales and engineering teams assisted Shape plastic and composites engineering manager, Toby Jacobson, with dialling in the ideal fabrics for the revolutionary curved pultrusion process. For this distinctive task, Jacobson, Shape’s team members and Vectorply’s staff turned to VectorLam, Vectorply’s proprietary laminate analysis software.

VectorLam provides a cloud-based, multi-platform compatible approach to classical laminate theory and helps customers achieve goals of stiffness, strength, weight and cost by allowing users to design the perfect laminate for their application. Despite the wide range of applications VectorLam excels in, Shape’s industry-first part provided a unique challenge for Vectorply’s engineering team and software.

With adjustments to VectorLam required, Vectorply senior composite engineer Molly Ditzler, accepted the challenge of tailoring the software to provide the perfect recommendations and data for Shape.

The hollow, curved bumper beam offered a unique challenge due to the complex structure dependent on multiple shear wall supports. As the relationship between Shape and Vectorply grew, several different versions of advanced carbon fabrics were produced for testing and validation.

“Our goal at Vectorply is to help customers build the best products through the use of highly engineered composite reinforcement fabrics and optimised laminates, especially in new and emerging markets. Shape and GM’s curved, pultruded bumper beam is a monumental accomplishment in the automotive and composite industries, and we are proud of the role that we played in the development and supply of specialty carbon fabrics for this ground-breaking application,” Vectorply president and interim CEO Trevor Humphrey said.