Plastic Part and Mold Design + Vehicle Crashworthiness & Body Structures — Combined Program

Seminar Overview

This combined program delivers Plastic Part and Mold Design and Vehicle Crashworthiness & Body Structures in one integrated 4-day format: the design methodology first, the analytical layer second, with the crossover points — how design decisions drive the analysis, and how analysis results feed back into the design — taught explicitly.

Part and mold design is where most plastics failures are born — not in the press, not in the material, but in a decision made weeks before the first shot was ever packed. This core seminar is built from the industry's primary design references: the **Covestro Part and Mold Design Guide**, the resin-producer molding and design guides from **BASF (Ultramid processing and engineering properties)** and **DuPont (Delrin, Crastin, Zytel, and Minlon molding guides)**, the **Victrex PEEK injection and compression molding guides**, the **British Plastics Federation (BPF) design guides**, the **Parker O-Ring Handbook** where sealing interfaces meet part design, and the **Loctite Design Guide for Bonding Plastics** where assembly joins it — together with a dedicated process-science module drawn from the **RJG molding process science** corpus. Crashworthiness is decided in the body structure, and engineers who understand it design safer vehicles and win disputes. Taught by former OEM body and crash engineers from Land Rover, BMW, Jeep, DaimlerChrysler, and Nissan, this seminar covers crash load paths, energy absorption, FMVSS crash requirements, CAE modeling (LS-DYNA and FEA), and the interaction of plastics and composites in crash. It is the structural complement to ETS's polymer courses and the foundation for hybrid metal-plastic crash work.

Ideal Learner

• Product and mechanical engineers designing injection-molded plastic parts
• Mold designers, tooling engineers, and mold-making project managers
• Plastics processing engineers and molding supervisors who must debug part quality at the press
• Body structure and BIW engineers
• Vehicle safety and crash-performance engineers
• CAE engineers modeling crash (LS-DYNA, FEA)

Learning Objectives

• Apply a structured part design methodology — function first, material second, feature rules third — to a new or existing molded part
• Set draft angles, nominal wall thickness, radii, rib and boss geometry correctly for crystalline vs. amorphous resins, including glass-filled behavior
• Select and locate gate types, size runners and sprues, and predict where sink, weld lines, and warpage will appear on the part
• Explain crash load paths and energy-management in the body structure
• Apply FMVSS 208 and related crash requirements to design
• Model crash behavior with FEA/LS-DYNA and interpret results

Consulting Sessions

Seminar attendees can sign up for individual consulting sessions with the instructor. Sessions are free for registered attendees, first-come first-served — sign up when registering by calling 248-539-0473 or during the seminar.