BASF Ultramid helps make all-plastic mounting bracket for VW Passat, Sharan

The world's first front-end carrier without metal reinforcement has now made the leap across platforms. The Volkswagen Group has used the mounting brackets made of BASF's plastic Ultramid in the new models of the Passat and Sharan; the polypropylene-steel hybrid component had been replaced by a pure plastic component made of Ultramid B3WG8 and full-BASF simulation service. The polyamide 6 from BASF helps that these two mounting brackets are significantly lighter than previous models and ssave installation time and costs. 

The new Passat was chosen among others because of its innovations for safety, design and overarching quality of Europe's ‘Car of the Year’ 2015. The mounting bracket in the Passat is the largest polyamide component of the vehicle and approximately 2.6kg. The used, reinforced with 40 percent glass fibres Ultramid B3WG8 has an excellent combination of permanent and operational stability. Thus, the plastic component at defined locations on the right dynamic stiffness and reflects the guidelines of the automobile manufacturer to crash acceleration and vibration behaviour of the entire front-end and radiator system.

Thanks to modern construction, the proportions of the Passat could be interpreted much more dynamic: including a lower body, a longer wheelbase and bigger wheels. The plastic mounting bracket contributes to these innovations, because it is significantly slimmer than its predecessor and the narrow space exploited optimally.

The various, sometimes very demanding load cases, were calculated during the Golf VII with BASF's simulation tool Ultrasim. The transfer of these results to the mounting bracket in the Passat and Sharan were therefore easily possible because Ultrasim can be seamlessly integrated into the computing environment of the entire vehicle at the automobile manufacturer. These are special, for example, crash-relevant material data of the plastic, which describe the influence of temperature, moisture and loading rate accurately.