Tepex dynalite from LANXESS for innovative lightweight design project
Published on : Friday 27-12-2019
BMBF project FuPro receives Materialica Award – Fibre composite modular system with Tepex organic sheets.
Cologne, December 2019 – The endless fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composite material Tepex dynalite from LANXESS has made a major contribution to the success of the FuPro project of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). At the international trade fair for mobility 4.0 “eMove360° Europe” in Munich, Germany, the project received the Gold Materialica Award in the “Surface & Technology” category. The abbreviation FuPro stands for “Design and process development for functionalized multi-component structures with complex hollow profiles”.
In the research project’s innovative fibre composite modular system, organic sheets, fibre composite hollow sections and injection moulding compounds were combined to form highly integrative multi-component structures. Using the case of a belt integral backrest the high application potential of the technology was demonstrated. The organic sheets used here are made from the semi-finished product Tepex dynalite 102-RG600 based on roving glass fabric and a polyamide 6 matrix. The LANXESS subsidiary Bond-Laminates in Brilon, Germany, manufactures these very lightweight yet highly resilient fibre composite semi-finished products.
The Materialica Award was already presented in 2014 and 2017 for products in which the innovation leader Tepex was used. In both cases, the corresponding components are now being employed in series production.
Within FuPro, an interdisciplinary team from industry and science developed a novel technology that integrates continuous fibre composite hollow profiles into hybrid organic sheet metal injection moulding structures. The project involved the Institute for Lightweight Engineering and Polymer Technology (ILK) at Dresden Technical University and Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH & Co. KG as well as the companies Arburg, AUMO, DITF Denkendorf, Elring Klinger, GK Concept, gwk, Schmalz, PHP Fibers and Werkzeugbau Siegfried Hofmann.
The objective of the FuPro research project was to develop and analyse a novel, large-scale production process for multi-component structures made from complex fibre-reinforced plastics (FRP) hollow profiles, organic sheets and injection moulding compounds. The aim is to achieve a level of process, structural and functional integration that goes far beyond classic design methods and thus to achieve significant weight reductions in vehicle structures.