Plastic engine parts could lead to lighter cars

To find further weight reductions, a Fraunhofer project group is developing ways of building engine cylinder blocks that are partly plastic.

Lighter engines that can still do the job of their heavier cousins have been around since the first aluminum engine blocks were introduced in the 1960s. Going one step further with plastic has been on the drawing boards since the 1980s, but plastic parts able to withstand engine heat and stress could only be made in small volumes and at great cost.

The approach taken by the Fraunhofer project group for new drive systems (NAS) was to create an experimental engine using fiber-reinforced plastic suitable for injection molding instead of aluminum.

“We used a fiber-reinforced composite material to build a cylinder casing for a one-cylinder research engine,” says Lars-Fredrik Berg, project leader and manager of the research area Lightweight Powertrain Design at NAS. “The cylinder casing weighs around 20 percent less than the equivalent aluminum component, and costs the same.”

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Plastic engine parts could lead to lighter cars