Grant: Automotive Partnership Canada Project

The Next Generation Fuel System (NGFS) process is a automotive tank manufacturing technology that combines the best attributes of both extrusion blow molding and thermoforming. The primary focus of this technology is to overcome limitations associated with current manufacturing technologies with respect to environmental and functional concerns due to increasingly stringent environmental regulations and new automotive fuel system specifications for Hybrid vehicles. This project strives to find innovative solutions using a combination material knowledge, predictive solutions to guide design, optimized and cost-effective manufacturing, and targeted product development based on market analysis - High Pressure Mu!ti-!ayer Plastic Fuel Tank. !n this project, we propose to develop and optimize the modeling and control of the Kautex NGFS process in order to make it suitable for mass production of automotive fuel tanks at a competitive cost. This new process is important for automotive fuel suppliers like Kautex because of its potential to reduce hydrocarbon emissions and its flexibility to include internal functional components during the forming process. The main goal is to be able to predict the outcome of a new tank design and to control the process sufficiently well for high-volume production without having to use expensive trial-and-error experimental methods. Through the exercise of developing predictive tools, the manufacturing process will be better understood in terms of its main characteristics, and therefore we will be able to better model its dynamics, and improve/optimize the NGFS process for mass production.