3A Composites develops new sandwich foam core

Weight reduction has become a major focus in the automotive industry. Composites, particularly sandwich designs, have a proven track record of delivering weight saving solutions.

Composite sandwich parts used in a car must fulfil very diverse requirements. The material mix and the manufacturing technology must both be specifically tailored to the individual part and its expected series volume.

Automotive applications require low total cost and extremely short production cycles, which demand innovative solutions that go beyond current practices in traditional composite industry segments. The new AIREX® foam core platform was developed with this in mind.

“This is a great achievement. The key challenges faced by the automotive industry are fuel savings and environmental protection – and our new sandwich foam technology can open up new horizons in these areas”, said Roman Thomassin, CEO of 3A Composites Core

Materials division, producer and manufacturer of AIREXBALTEKBANOVA products. “Our goal is to support the automotive industry in its strive toward weight reduction, and to deliver a sustainable and cost-efficient sandwich solution to accelerate the growth of structural sandwich parts in high volume car production”, said Eric Gauthier, President of

Global Key Accounts of 3A Composites Core Materials. Tests with multiple resin systems – both thermoset & thermoplastic as well as various sandwich production processes – have already proven that a short cycle time and excellent part quality can be achieved with the new AIREX® foam platform, even with series volumes of more than 100k parts per year.

3A Composites will be present at the following automotive events and available for one-onone meetings about strategies on utilizing our new structural AIREX® foam core and advanced composite solutions:

Leichtbaugipfel (13-15 March 2018 in Würzburg, Germany)

Kunststoffe im Automobilbau PIAE (14-15 March in Mannheim, Germany)

www.airexbaltekbanova.com