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Unique service offering pushes the boundaries of metal replacement 30 percent mass reduction and accelerated time to market several million thermoplastic engine-mounts by 2016
Lyon, France, October 16, 2013 ---Thanks to Solvay’s MMI1 Technyl®Design teams at Solvay Engineering Plastics, a global leader in polyamide materials and TrelleborgVibracoustic, the market leader in automotive vibration control solutions have together created a faster and smarter way to design and develop thermoplastic engine mounts.
“When designing high performance engine mounts it is essential to provide our customers with products which offer greater endurance coupled with less weight, therefore we are constantly looking for lighter materials, replacing metals with plastics,” explains Ludovic Chauvet, Engineering Expert at TrelleborgVibracoustic. “Our choice of utilizing MMI Technyl® Design was determined by the quality of the material anisotropic data available for Technyl products. Building on the results, we developed a unique solution for designing and predicting the performance and manufacturing of structural components, while taking into account the production process,” he added. “Together with our FIAPLAST programme for mechanical dimensioning, this unique approach enabled us to decrease the mass of our customers’ engine mounts by 30 percent and reduce time to market.”
MMI Technyl®Design is an advanced service Solvay Engineering Plastics offers customers to meet the light- weight challenge. This technological solution is allied with an extremely comprehensive materials database and allows for a wide range of calculations when integrated with injection process modeling. A powerful and high- performance solution allowing to accurately predict the performance of injection-molded parts made from Technyl®materials and thereby significantly reduce the mass and cost of the applications, for which crash and fatigue resistance are key requirements.
The first applications developed by TrelleborgVibracoustic for engine mounts with significantly reduced mass were at Peugeot-Citroën for their 3-cylinder engines. Today, applications can also be found at Renault-Nissan on some Renault, Nissan and Dacia models. By 2016, TrelleborgVibracoustic will be producing several million thermoplastic engine mount components annually.
“For the past several years, our specialist teams and our advanced services such as MMI Technyl® Design have been pushing the boundaries of metal replacement in the engine compartment,” says Peter Browning, Global Automotive Market Director at Solvay Engineering Plastics. “We are proud of our partnerships with automotive manufacturers and their suppliers being able to help them create value at each production phase from design through to industrialisation.”
For 60 years, high-performance Technyl® materials have led to value-added innovations in such varied industries as automotive and transport, construction and energy, consumer goods and industrial equipment. Today, the Technyl®range is stronger than ever owing to the differentiating offer of products and services for Metal Replacement, Fire Protection, Thermal Management and Fluid Barrier applications founded on Solvay Engineering Plastics’ expertise.
For further information about Technyl®solutions please visit www.technyl.com
(1): MMI (Multi-scale modelling, Mechanical calculation, Injection moulding simulation) is powered by DIGIMAT™ software from e-Xstream.
®Technyl is a registered trademark of Rhodia Operations, member of the Solvay group.
As an international chemical group, SOLVAY assists industries in finding and implementing ever more responsible and value-creating solutions. The Group is firmly committed to sustainable development and focused on innovation and operational excellence. Solvay serves diversified markets, generating 90% of its turnover in activities where it is one of the top three worldwide. The group is headquartered in Brussels, employs about 29,000 people in 55 countries and generated 12.4 billion euros in net sales in 2012. Solvay SA is listed as SOLB.BE on NYSE Euronext in Brussels and Paris (Bloomberg: SOLB:BB - Reuters: SOLB.BR).
TrelleborgVibracoustic is a leading supplier of automotive anti-vibration solutions in the global passenger car and commercial vehicle industry. Established as a joint venture between Freudenberg and Trelleborg, the company generated sales of approximately €1.6 billion in 2012. Employing over 8,000 employees in 18 countries TrelleborgVibracoustic designs, develops and manufactures leading edge vibration control technologies worldwide. For more information visit www.tbvc.com.
