Carbon- and glass-fibre-reinforced composites are smoothing the way for tomorrow’s green, energy-efficient mobility. As highly sturdy, resistant, yet very light materials, they offer a wide range of potential uses in construction, thus accelerating the global trend towards lightweight designs for commercial vehicles.
Whether they are featured as outer and inner face sheets in side walls and roofing or as extremely resilient floor covering, LAMILUX composites are used across the surfaces of almost all essential body sections which give vehicles their stability. Europe’s leading manufacturer of fibre-reinforced composite sheeting, LAMILUX, will be providing a comprehensive, detailed insight into the variety of materials and applications that it offers at IAA Commercial Vehicles in Hannover.
LAMILUX products and ideas will be showcased in a life-size, dry-freight truck body which visitors can enter on the company exhibition stand.
As a result of their light weight combined with optimum stability and resistance to UV light, corrosion and weathering, fibre-reinforced composites far outperform conventional materials used in commercial vehicles, such as aluminium and sheet steel. These high-tech materials can be used as inner and outer sandwich face sheets on side walls. They are also ideal in their numerous variants for use in roofs and floors.
With its High Strength X-treme Carbon, LAMILUX is the first manufacturer worldwide to produce carbon fibre-reinforced composites (CFCs) with a width of up to 3.20 metres in a continuous flat sheet manufacturing process.
The CFC optimally meets the requirements of lightweight design as a material featuring optimum strength and resistance combined with a very low mass per unit area. The potential of this material lies mainly in the construction of walls and roofs on lightweight truck bodies and trailers. CFC is up to 50 per cent lighter with a tensile strength three or four times greater than that in steel or aluminium.
Light but strong materials
The fibre-reinforced composite LAMILUX High Strength has been specially developed for extreme commercial vehicle applications exposed to very high mechanical loads. Thanks to its resistance to hail storms and UV light, and its low heat expansion, it is eminently suitable as large-scale roof sheeting. The material’s optional transparent property allows daylight to stream into vehicle body and trailer interiors, highly useful when loading and unloading.
With its GRP material LAMILUX Anti Slip, LAMILUX focuses on flooring in commercial vehicles. It unites the advantages of fibre-reinforced composites and low mass per unit area with a universal product feature which is extremely beneficial for the transport industry: anti-slip protection. Quartz sand or granite granulate is applied to the surface of this extremely robust resin and glass-fibre composite during the lamination process, ensuring the product achieved top ratings regarding its anti-slip properties (up to Class R13) when tested in accordance with DIN 51130.
The composite LAMILUXplan High Impact has managed to combine the design advantages of three structural materials for commercial vehicle construction. Used as the inner and outer face sheet in side walls, this material features the impact resistance and surface finish of coated metal facings. It also possesses the low thermal conductivity and elastic deformability found in thermoplastic materials while offering the high resistance to UV light, weathering and corrosion of thermosetting polymers.
Thanks to its extremely impact-resistant behaviour and tensile strength, LAMILUX High Impact is even able to withstand the effects of strong frontal forces, such as those encountered when loading and unloading.
LAMILUX Composites GmbH has been producing fibre-reinforced composites for about 60 years. This medium-sized company is Europe’s leading producer, thanks to its technologically advanced continuous manufacturing process, large production capacities and wide product range.
LAMILUX supplies customers around the globe in a wide range of sectors such as the construction industry, the automotive and recreational vehicle industries, refrigerated store room and cell construction and many other industrial sectors.
In 2011, LAMILUX, the family-managed company based in Rehau, Bavaria, achieved a turnover of 143 million euros.