The FlaxTape pre-impregnated with a polyester resin is used to made sandwich panels, which can be effectively used as multi-position trunk loadfloor or structural floor in the passenger compartment of a vehicle. The prepreg FlaxTapes™ of about 120 g/m² constituting the skins of the sandwich, are unidirectionally aligned flax fibers tapes, with acrylic resin here, easily manipulable without requiring any spinning or weaving step and thus without any negative out of plane crimping of the almost continuous flax fibers.
The Flaxpreg™ project, developed by Faurecia with PSA, Lineo and the University of Reims, aims to design structural trim parts, following the three objectives: a drastic weight reduction, the use of renewable resources and a process in line with automotive cycle times and material costs constraints. Thanks to their very low 1,45 density combined with an adaptative 0°/90°/0° orientation of the FlaxTapes™ depending on the loading boundary conditions, the resulting excellent mechanical properties allow a – 35% weight reduction compared to petro-sourced Glass mat/PUR sandwich solutions (like the Baypreg).
The vibro-acoustic damping properties of these FlaxTape™ skins are remarkable with an almost 2% Damping Loss Factor. Correlations between static experimental measurements and mechanical simulation using Finite Element method with a homogenized honeycomb model will be presented besides first results regarding creeping and vibro-acoustic sandwich properties.
