A Case Study of an Automotive Roof with Cost Analysis

The automotive engineers are seeking the best manufacturing processes in order to meet the highly exigent requirements in terms of lightweight and cost. The main scope of the present paper is to give an understanding of the cost structures of Resin Transfer Molding (RTM), High Pressure RTM (HP-RTM) and Compression RTM (CRTM) manufacturing cells for production volumes of 90,000 automotive roofs per year. Filling and curing times, as well as pressure distribution, have been estimated by PAM-RTM simulations. Equipment and tooling have been selected based on this information. Finally, the roof costs for each RTM variant have been calculated taking into account the investments, energy consumption and plant costs. The main conclusion is that, taking conventional RTM as reference, cost is reduced by a 38% with HP-RTM technology, and by a 93% by CRTM.