Automotive Materials Testing

Today’s automotive parts have seen incredible advances in the functionality and reliability of transmissions, fuel injection systems, power trains, and braking systems. These improvements are the result of fundamental advances in the materials used in automotive manufacturing, including novel, increasingly complex steel, glass, ceramic, and polymer materials.

Automotive materials testing

These improvements, however, also come with new challenges. For example, high-precision automotive parts are more susceptible to residual, micron-size particulate contamination, which results in component, or potentially even system, failure. To make matters worse, current analytical techniques are often inadequate (too low resolution) to help engineers determine the cause of these failures.

New vehicles also undergo extensive testing to ensure the production of reliable, quality automobiles along with further improvements to current materials and processes.  For instance, the increasing demand for affordable, fuel-efficient tires requires better test methods to develop and study new rubber formulations. The next generation of rubber compounds has to reduce road resistance while still yielding a quality end product in order to substantially impact fuel efficiency. This starts with detailed analytical assessment using techniques such as electron microscopy.  

Automotive quality control

Thermo Fisher Scientific provides a range of instrumentation and software that simplifies your automotive materials analysis. These tools also have the potential to greatly reduce production times as you bring the quality control process in-house. By no longer relying on outsourcing for your QC analysis, production-cycle time can decrease by up to ten-fold.