Lamborghini Eyes Fewer “Weighty Fasteners”
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Lamborghini Eyes Fewer “Weighty Fasteners”
Lamborghini’s Advanced Composite Structures Laboratory is one of the only places outside of Boeing that can simulate lightning strikes, hail, birdstrikes, and engine failures, Automobile Magazine reports.
The lab is under the careful tutelage of Dr. Paolo Feraboli.
“I always wanted to build and design fighter jets,” he told Automobile Magazine. “I am not an engineer. I am a carbon-fiber designer.”
Under his direction, a five-person team tests, engineers, and creates “works of carbon-fiber art,” from the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento to more than 1,000 parts for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.
Feraboli believed that carbon-fiber manufacturing could be sped up by eliminating the traditional molding, heating, and curing process, so he started mixing chopped carbon-fiber sheets with soft-at-room-temperature resin, placing the mixture into a steel mold and heating it under intense, 2,000-psi pressure, according to Automobile Magazine.
The process is called Forged Composite (FC) technology and has been patented by Lamborghini, having taken eight years to perfect.
“The materials can be repaired without reducing structural integrity.”
When asked about the nearly 2-ton weight of the car, Feraboli said: “Everyone thinks that it’s the engine that adds to the weight. Like in airplane manufacturing, everyone says, ‘OK, lets make the fuselage and the wings and tail out of light materials’—but then they attach all the pieces using steel connectors.”
If Feraboli has his way, the next Lamborghini will have a single-piece, completely carbon-fiber fuselage that does away with what he called “loathsome weighty fasteners.”
“Forged Composite is the next thing for car design,” he says, “and if we can make it lighter, stronger, modular, and integrated, the sky is really the limit.”
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