With its fiber-reinforced composite sheeting manufactured in a continuous production process, German-based LAMILUX provides sophisticated, time-tested, high-tech materials for bus manufacture. Used both inside and out, these materials offer great advantages with their extremely lightweight and exceptional strength. Completely corrosion-free, they feature excellent resistance to hail storms. These fiber-reinforced composites particularly impress, thanks to their long service life, robustness, and resistance to weathering, chemicals, and ultra-violet light. Manufacturers can use them to build lightweight vehicle bodies due to their low mass per unit area.
The composite sheets can be bonded across their full length and width of up to 3.2 metres to steel or aluminum frameworks in roof structures. Fiber-reinforced composites in the sidewalls can form segmented elements on the outside and are used in wall paneling on the inside.
As structural components in roofs and sidewalls, these FRP materials produce a strengthening effect and offer resistance to high compressive and flexural stress loads. Hailstorms and impacts at specific points in minor accidents do not usually cause any damage, thanks to the materials’ high impact resistance. If dents or cracks should appear, the blemished surfaces can be quickly touched up, while individual sections in segmented structures can be simply replaced.
Highly resistant to UV light, hail and weathering
Due to their optimum resistance to UV light, weathering, and corrosion, these materials are extremely long lasting and do not fade for a long period of time. LAMILUX has provided proof of these excellent characteristics through extensive, internationally recognized test methods, such as the XENO test (DIN EN ISO 4892-2), the SUN test, the salt spray test (DIN EN ISO 9227), and long-term weathering tests.
The low heat expansion really pays off when fiber-reinforced composites are used as roof sheeting. The high glass fiber content keeps heat expansion so low that it is possible to use the material intact across its whole surface, ensuring roof structures on buses remain largely free of stress loads, even when temperatures change.
It is not only the mechanical, chemical and physical properties which impress. These fiber-reinforced composites also captivate with their highly attractive outward appearance, thanks to their smooth, pore-free surfaces. Personalized colors can be added from the full RAL and NCS system ranges or in customer-specific tones. The color particles are introduced into the sealing gel coat layer during the actual production process of the material itself.
This not only means that applying a subsequent paint finish is unnecessary. The color will also not flake off due to corrosion or chip off due to deformation or scratches, as is usually the case with conventional paint finishes on aluminum or steel sheeting. However, these fiber-reinforced composites can also be produced and supplied in a neutral white ready for a subsequent paint finish.
Using these sturdy, yet very lightweight materials can greatly reduce the overall weight of vehicles in comparison to designs featuring steel paneling. These materials also provide better insulation in the overall structure since they exhibit lower thermal conductivity than steel paneling and thus eliminate more thermal bridges.
Custom-produced material with many variations
LAMILUX manufactures its fiber-reinforced composites in its four self-developed flat production systems over one hundred metres long. These systems are regarded as the most modern of their kind throughout the sector. Their highly automated, computer-controlled production technology facilitates manufacture of fiber-reinforced composites 24 hours a day in consistent, optimum quality, which can be reproduced at any time. Thus produced are customizable materials, the properties of which can be tailored to specific requirements and intended use.
The company is the world’s first manufacturer of fiber-reinforced composites opting to have its laboratories and testing facilities certified by the TÜV Süd Group, thus ensuring optimum quality standards. Almost 20 laboratories and testing facilities have been successfully appraised and checked overall.
Its fully developed test methods and test series enable LAMILUX to maintain the characteristics in its materials on a permanent basis, thus guaranteeing the great benefit of its construction materials in practical use for the long term.