How TWI can Help
TWI’s expertise can offer manufacturers with support in joining challenging materials together, including dissimilar parts. We can also work on process improvement and recommendations to optimise design and achieve high productivity and enhanced light-weighting techniques.
Our work can help reduce costs and meet the challenges of welding and joining for electrification, such as welding battery units together and sealing the battery tray help mitigate the dangers associated with the batteries catching fire.
The challenges relating to the batteries are just one area where TWI can assist automakers. For example, our knowledge of coatings can be used to keep on-board cameras clean and we can help with the use and joining of composite structures for vehicle bodies. Car manufacturers are keen to make motors as small as possible yet also able to deliver as much power as possible while using as little energy as they can. To achieve these goals, TWI can assist with material selection and joining techniques to optimise the entire drivetrain.
Further to this, newly developed technologies look set to offer further improvements and advances.
One such technology that could have game-changing applications for the auto industry comes from TWI’s Surflow project, which allows for data to be transferred through composite structures, thereby eliminating the need for complex, costly and heavy wiring systems. This could be further enhanced with 5G technology, including advances in vehicle to vehicle (VtV) and vehicle to everything (VtE) communications.
Another upcoming technology is TWI’s work in friction stir tunnelling, a new process that will allow for cooling channels in motors and battery trays.