Lighter Vehicles Start with Sika
The trend towards lightweight structures in car body construction has made mixed assembly of lightweight and composite materials a common strategy.
Our structural SikaForce® and Sikaflex® products with high modulus contribute to car stiffness. Due to certain flexibility and its ability to cover different thermal elongations, mixed material combinations such as e-coated steel and composite structures can be bonded. This creates a new level of design freedom and allows engineers an innovative use of lightweight materials, where traditional joining technologies like spot welding were setting technical boundaries.
This innovative adhesive family provides an industry leading solution to the most challenging assembly line bonding application; providing exceptional performance, while accommodating the differences in material thermal expansion and contraction properties (Δ α) of the different materials.
Applications
- Aluminum/CFRP roof to steel body bonding
- CFRP to aluminum bonding
- CFRP/CFRP bonding
Benefits
- Enables lightweight structure assembly in cold body shop
- High elasticity
- Accommodation of Δ α due to high elongation
- Constant mechanical performance over service temperature range
- Contributes directly to improvement of body stiffness due to high modulus properties
