POLYURETHANE ADHESIVES FOR PRODUCTIVITY AND PERFORMANCE

摘要

This paper will describe new market requirements in composite bonding of parts for automotive, truck, and heavy equipment, and how new polyurethane adhesive technology is addressing these needs. In the area of conventional sheet molding compound (SMC) applica-tions, the market is driving many programs to smaller annual volumes causing some composite fabricators to move away from investment in heated bond fixtures, while others are shifting to different materials, e.g. resin-transfer molding (RTM). New adhesives are required in these applications to enhance productivity versus cur-rent technology while still passing rigorous OEM per-formance specifications. In other applications, carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) and various thermoplas-tics used in dissimilar joints are demanding higher elon-gation in order to manage joint motion due to thermal mismatch. The automotive industry has also recog-nized the value of eliminating the glass transition tem-perature evident in conventional 2-part polyurethane ad-hesives from the operating temperature range to produce more consistent behavior of the joint versus temperature. Polyurethane adhesive solutions will be presented to illu-strate how the new market requirements have been ad-dressed.