The use of composite materials in automotive industry

The automotive industry's use of structural composite materials began in the1950s. Since those early days, it has been demonstrated that composites arelightweight, fatigue resistant and easily moulded to shape in other words, aseemingly attractive alternative to metals. However, there has been no widespreadswitch from metals to composites in the automotive sector. This is because there area number of technical issues relating to the use of composite materials that still needto be resolved including accurate material characterization, manufacturing andjoining. This paper reports composite materials determining by Ashby?s materialselection technique usage in automotive industry. Especially bus exterior and interiorcomponents manufacturing by fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) are used in thismaster thesis.Keywords: Material selection, composite materials, bus components, Ashby?stechnique, Fiber reinforced polymers