TROY—The executive planning committee for the SPE Automotive Composites Conference & Expo (ACCE) is announcing the first keynote speaker for their ACCE 2020 Virtual Event, Sept. 9-11. Jose Chirino, American Chemistry Council Automotive Team Chair and Technical Director for the High Performance Materials business unit at Lanxess Corp., will present “Automotive Plastics and Polymer Composites: A Roadmap for Future Mobility.”
The presentation will outline the American Chemistry Council’s new roadmap to help automakers and their suppliers invent mobility solutions that can meet the demands of the revolution underway in personal mobility. The new roadmap calls for a series of industry-wide, collaborative activities to capture opportunities in each area of the ACCESS framework – Autonomy, Connectivity, Circularity, Electrification, Shared Mobility and Sustainability. These pre-competitive, cooperative efforts will help automakers unleash the full potential of the advanced plastics and composites essential to enabling future mobility needs.
Included will be information on lightweight plastics’ and composites’ role in vehicle and passenger safety, their essential contributions to megatrends like autonomous driving, and latest research projects shaping the industry.
“Mobility solutions of the future will be enabled by the unique and flexible characteristics inherent in polymer composites,” said Chirino. “Composites enable safe and seamless integration of sensors, electronics, and batteries into vehicles without adding extra weight. Automotive fuel economy is improved and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced with the mass savings enabled by lightweight plastics and polymer composites. Polymer composites can also enhance interiors with improved wear and tear, antimicrobial surfaces, and enable modular and multi-configurable interior components desired in shared and autonomous vehicles.”
Chirino became the chair for the ACC Automotive team in the Spring of 2019. The ACC Automotive team is a pre-competitive forum of plastics industry experts promoting broader polymer solutions for the automotive industry.
Chirino’s 20 years of experience in plastics, encompasses the spectrum of production to end-product, and design through application development with various polymers such as: polyurethanes, polycarbonate, polyesters and polyamides. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
In addition to daily keynote presentations, the three-day virtual ACCE will feature approximately 45 technical presentations, panel discussions, and more than 50 sponsors presenting advances in materials, processes, and equipment for both thermoset and thermoplastic composites in a wide variety of transportation applications. Daily virtual networking opportunities will enhance the value of the event that expects to draw over 400 attendees worldwide. The Automotive and Composites Divisions of the Society of Plastics Engineers jointly produce the ACCE to educate the industry about the benefits of composites in automotive, light and heavy-duty truck, off-highway vehicles, and other ground transportation applications.
The technical presentations, each 20 to 30 minutes long, are organized in the following categories: Advances in Thermoplastic Composites, Advances in Thermoset Composites, Virtual Prototyping, Testing & Modeling, Reinforcement Technologies, Additive Manufacturing & 3D Printing, Nanocomposites, Enabling Technologies, Sustainable Composites, Bonding, Joining & Finishing, Opportunities & Challenges with Carbon Composites, and Business Trends & Technology Solutions.
“Composites – Driving Innovative Transportation with Electrification, Mobility, Autonomy,” is the theme for this year’s event, reflecting the industry advancing with new technologies and polymer composites solutions. The 2020 ACCE is co-chaired by Alper Kiziltas, technical expert, Ford Motor Co., and SPE Automotive Division Chair, and Xiaosong Huang, lab group manager of Polymer Composites Systems in GM Global Research & Development, General Motors Co.
The technical program is co-chaired by David Jack, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Baylor University, Leonardo Simon, professor of chemical engineering at Waterloo University, and Oleksandr G. Kravchenko, assistant professor in the composites modeling and manufacturing group in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Old Dominion University.
For more information and the SPE ACCE see www.speautomotive.com/acce . For more information on the Society of Plastics Engineers, see www.4spe.org