Corvette gets first carbon-fiber hood. (Composites).The hood for the General Motors' 2004 Chevrolet Corvette corvette, small warship, classed between a frigate and a sloop-of-war. Corvettes usually were flush-decked and carried fewer than 28 guns. They were widely employed in escorting convoys and attacking merchant ships during the great naval wars of the late 18th and Z06 Commemorative Edition scores several "firsts" for carbon-fiber composites. For one thing, it's said to be the first time such a material has been used as original equipment on a painted, Class-A exterior body panel on a North American North American named after North America. North American blastomycosis see North American blastomycosis. North American cattle tick see boophilusannulatus. production vehicle. It's also described as the first introduction of aerospace-quality advanced composites into a traditional automotive assembly line. The panels are produced by MacLean Quality Composites in West Jordan, Utah West Jordan is a city and a suburb of Salt Lake City in the U.S. state of Utah. West Jordan is a rapidly growing suburb of Salt Lake City, with a balanced housing stock, quality commercial districts and a strong industrial base. , an operating unit operating unit A type of operating company that engages in transactions with outsiders and that is owned by another business. For example, in 1995 the stockholders of Capital Cities/ABC approved a $19 billion merger with the Walt Disney Company, whereupon of MacLean Vehicle Systems, Mundelein, Ill. Weighing only 20.5 lb, the carbon-fiber hood is 10.6 lb lighter than the standard fiberglass SMC SMC Saint Mary's College SMC Santa Monica College SMC Solaris Management Console SMC Smooth Muscle Cell SMC Small Magellanic Cloud (also see LMC) SMC Safety Management Certificate (maritime shipping) hood. The Class-A outer skin is only 1.2 mm (0.048 in.) thick, similar to stamped sheet metal, and is the thinnest plastic-composite skin on a production vehicle. (SMC typically is 2 to 2.5 mm thick.) That outer skin is of carbon-fiber/epoxy unidirectional prepreg supplied by Toray Composites (America), Inc., Tacoma, Wash. The hood's inner structure is a hybrid of carbon-fiber SMC and low-density fiberglass SMC. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion