Designs on car of the future

Depleting oil reserves and rising petrol costs are adding urgency to the quest to make cars more fuel-efficient. Part of the solution is to make cars lighter so they use less energy, and that’s just what Deakin PhD researcher Mandy Herring is working towards.

She is studying motor vehicle panels made from carbon fibre composites at the Centre for Material and Fibre Innovation at the Geelong Technology Precinct. The strength and lightness of carbon fibre has the potential to transform the way cars are made, a step-change as significant as the invention of the assembly line.

“Carbon fibre composite body panels reduce the overall mass of the car so it’s reducing vehicle weight, producing better fuel economy and fewer emissions,” Ms Herring says. She is specifically interested in how a new process, called Quickstep, for the manufacture of advanced composite components such as those reinforced with carbon fibres compares with the traditional autoclaving technique.

“At the moment carbon fibre panels are only available on exotic vehicles such as Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini because they are so expensive to manufacture with autoclaving. To cure one panel can take several hours but with Quickstep it might take minutes.”

Ms Herring is comparing the surface finish of body panels produced using both methods.

When choosing an undergraduate degree, Ms Herring was considering Melbourne and Deakin universities. She chose Deakin because it is closer to home, and she has not regretted the choice.

While still an engineering undergraduate, Ms Herring needed to do a final-year project and chose one on carbon fibre composite surface finishes that was available through the Victorian Centre for Advanced Materials Manufacturing. She enjoyed it so much she decided to pursue a PhD in the same field. “I realised how much work there was to do in that area, that I was doing cuttingedge research at a very early stage in my career.” Just as significantly, “I wouldn’t be able to do this research at any other university in Australia.”