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Composite manufacturing in the automotive industry is striving for short cycle times to be competitive with conventional manufacturing methods, while enabling significant weight reductions. High Pressure Resin Transfer Molding (HP-RTM) is becoming one of the processes of choice for composite applications due to its ability to enable high speed part production. In this regard, researchers need to offer differentiated ultra-fast curing resin systems for carbon fiber composites for automotive structural and nonstructural applications to enable Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to meet their large volume lightweight targets in concert with present day low-carbon footprint legislations. In order to expand applications for composites in the automotive industry it is necessary to optimize all aspects of the production cycle using predictive modeling.

Since their introduction in automobiles, polymeric materials have enabled designers and engineers to differentiate products based on performance attributes, mechanical response, aesthetics, and manufacturing techniques. A large segment of these applications utilizes polypropylene (PP) resins. One of the attractive features of PP polymers is the ability to tailor their mechanical, thermal and processing performance envelope via modification of their composition and the addition of fillers. Key to the successful application of PP resins in structural systems is the ability of designers and engineers to understand the material response and to properly model the behavior of PP structures upon different mechanical and thermal loading conditions.