From battery protection
to keeping sensors
clean—Röchling is
developing useful tech.
By GARY S. VASILASH, Editor-In-Chief
RÖCHLING
ADVANCES SYSTEMS FOR
STRUCTURES AND SENSORS
Röchling Automotive ( roechling.com ) has developed a
number of technologies that are absolutely applicable to
electrified vehicles, as well as to vehicles that have increased
numbers of sensors, regardless of their level of autonomy.
For example, there is its integrated sandwich floor (ISF) that
it has had available which combines acoustic, crash safety and
stiffness characteristics by being made of layered, sandwich
materials. Underneath the carpet in the cabin there is a
sandwich material that is both 50 percent lighter and thinner
than conventional approaches. They've developed what they
call "Stratura Hybrid," a lightweight composite material that is
part of a structure.
For a given vehicle, there is the carpet on top of a micro-
perforated aluminum sheet, then the composite, another
aluminum sheet, and a stone-resistant coating that would be
exposed to the road.
According to Vincent Mauroit, the company's general mana-
ger of Innovation & Business Development, another benefit
of the ISF is that it can provide electromagnetic protection.
So taking this into a new direction, they've developed battery
housings made with the sandwich material that provide crash
energy absorption in case of an accident; the material is said
not to break or splinter as it provides protection.
It is worth pointing out that one of the characteristics of
electric vehicles that is far different than those powered by
internal combustion engines is that because there isn't the
engine noise, road noise is all the more perceptible, so the
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