Adhesive and Sound Damping to Meet Automotive Resilience Standard

Car makers increasingly try to stand out by offering highquality and functional car interiors, with treated surface materials playing a decisive role in their creation. There are different procedures that suppliers use in order to upgrade surfaces, the most flexible and most sophisticated of which is currently thermo-laminating. This process involves the use of carrier materials made of linked natural fibers or plastics, such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. The interiors are refined with thermo-plastic films, such as thermoplastic polyolefin or polyvinyl chloride, as well as leather or textile materials that are applied with the help of laminating adhesives. This lamination process calls for reliable and resilient adhesives that must meet the highest standards to fulfill the reliability and resilience demands of the automotive industry

BASF offers a broad range of raw materials for water-based adhesives that have been specifically developed for technical lamination. The company’s dispersions, in combination with additives, can be formulated to become two-component adhesives or latent-reactive systems, and can be used to develop odor-free, block-resistant adhesives that can cope with extreme climatic changes. BASF’s products include Luphen® polyurethane and Acronal® acrylic dispersions, which are perfectly suited to 3D furniture lamination and foam bonding. Aqueous, liquid-applied sound damping (LASD) is increasingly used to optimize the interior acoustics of cars and railway carriages, with systems being designed to suppress bodywork vibrations. Due to the efficiency and precision of automated spray robots, water-based LASD masses are becoming the modern alternative to traditional bitumen mats. One significant advantage is that aqueous technology leads to significant weight savings. As a pioneer in this field, BASF provides at least 70% of the components used in the formula for LASD application, from high-quality acrylic and styrene-butadiene polymer dispersions, which have been specifically developed for this application, to additives that allow for masses to be rheologically modified, ensuring an ideal spraying application.