Innovative materials with good weight-specific and mechanical properties as well as the appropriate use of materials in construction are essential to develop efficient vehicles with low emissions.

Carbon-fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) therefore play an important role, thanks to their good mechanical characteristics. However, there is still a great need for research concerning their ecological and economical production and processing or the further use of fiber waste.

Multi-material construction combines the lightweight advantages of CFRP with standard cycle times of serial production at acceptable cost levels.

Within the project CAMISMA we created a hybrid sport seat backrest, which meets all relevant safety requirements and still is 50 % lighter than the serial reference seat. It was produced with a hybrid thermoforming injection process, and can be built for about 7 – 8 euro per Kilogram if set up as a serial production line with estimated 150,000 pieces per year.

With the help of our dynamic FEM simulations we analyzed and optimized the crash behavior of the backrest structure. Plus, we validated its properties in real crash tests with prototypes on our crash test bench.