DuPont materials named in two SPE automotive innovation awards

DuPont materials, design and development support have been featured in two automotive components honored at the 44^th Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) Automotive Innovation Awards Competition & Gala recently in Livonia, Michigan.  

Renault’s win in the ‘Most Innovative Use of Plastics’ award in the Chassis & Hardware category features DuPont Zytel LCPA long chain polyamide, DuPont Bynel adhesive resin and a patented DuPont design technology in flexible coolant pipes.  The constant velocity joint (CVJ) half-shaft drive-axle boot seal using DuPont Hytrel TPC/ET thermoplastic polyester elastomer was selected as the 2014 Hall of Fame winner.

“This industry is all about collaborating to bring innovation to market,” said Patrick E Lindner, DuPont Performance Polymers president. “The fact that we were named in both a new innovation and a Hall of Fame innovation shows the strength that an advanced materials company with a long history in the industry can bring. This is especially important as the industry examines every component and every system for ways to reduce weight and improve efficiencies.”

Reducing weight by 60 percent
Renault’s Twingo uses two tubes, the longest of which is three metres (10 feet), to transfer water and glycol from the radiator in the front to the engine in the rear.  The challenge for system supplier and moulder Tristone Flowtech Group, Frankfurt, Germany, was to find a lightweight material/technology solution for the large-diameter, long tubes that needed to resist three bar pressures, aggressive fluids and road salt all while bending through the vehicle system to meet packaging requirements. 

This is where DuPont advanced materials combined with DuPont’s patented Variable Stiffness Bellows (VSB) technology helped enable the thermoplastic parts to be flexible yet high-pressure resistant and ultimately take 60 percent of the weight out of the system previously made of aluminium.  

The Hall of Fame award is given to one component in continuous production for at least 15 years that has made a significant and lasting contribution to the application of plastics in automobiles. General Motors in 1984 was the first to use this year’s recipient – CVJ boots made of Hytrel (pictured above). The inherent wear resistance and flexibility of Hytrel significantly improved the durability of CVJ boots, which protect a vehicle’s rotating shaft from road debris and axle grease. Today, 85 percent of front-axle CVJ boot seals on light-duty vehicles worldwide use thermoplastic polyester elastomer in this application.   

Development of the inaugural programme was a co-operative team from GM, Nexteer Automotive, formerly GM Saginaw Steering Gear Division, ABC Group and DuPont. 

The SPE Automotive Innovation Awards program is the oldest and largest competition of its kind in the automotive and plastics industries.