mwg
Member
Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
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Glass Reinforced Plastic.
Is that basically fibreglass? Or is GRP the same as standard Corsa bumpers are made out of?
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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GRP is Glass Reinforced Polymer if you want to be picky...
It's the technical name for what most people call fibreglass, as fibreglass strictly is just the chopped strands used for the polymer reinforcement.
Standard Corsa bumpers are made from Polypropylene or a similar plastic...
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mwg
Member
Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
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excellent, thats exactly what I needed to know. Thanks Ed!
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ed
Member
Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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Although if I wanted to be picky again I should have said:
Standard Corsa bumpers are made from Polypropylene or a similar polymer...
As plastic is a way of describing how a material deforms before it fractures. God I spend too much time learning stuff like this 
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tom_simes
Show Staff
Organiser: South Wales
Premium Member
Registered: 12th Jan 05
Location: Undy, Newport Drives: Skoda Octavia vRS estate
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GRP is a quite strong and resistant type of fibreglass, although rather heavy.
A racing boat (sailing, a small dinghy) is made from FRP, which is much lighter and still strong, but does not absorb an impact as well.
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alistairolsen
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Registered: 21st Jan 06
Location: glasgow
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WTF
FRP is fibre reinforced polymer, ie any fibre bound by a thermosetting polymer.
GRP is a type of FRP. All GRP is FRP, but not all FRP is GRP.
GRP is any polymr which is reinforced with glass fibres.
GRP covers fine surfacing tissue and chopped strand matt (CSM - what bumpers etc are made from) This is fairly heavy due to a high resin ration, relatively flexible and easy to work (although most car parts are shoddy to say the least.) It also covers woven matts whih have fibres in two directions such as used in the ayup of yacht hulls, and rovings which are a unidirectional fibre reinforcement bound by a very few transverse strands. This provides massive strength in a single direction.
The resin used is normally polester resin in styrene which is cured by a catalyst at room temperature. Other resins such as epoxy may be used, cured at room temp, or in industrial applications in an oven or autoclave. Epoxy resin consists of two parts generally mixed in equal proportions, although you can buy it premixed (this needs to be kept refrigerated and is cured at 180 degrees)
Other possible fibres in FRP include carbon fibre, aramid (kevlar) and even cotton
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