Bumper brackets and tailgates are the essential applications in the vehicle exterior which have already been standard applications for many years now. It is primarily the behaviour in crash conditions, besides the structural tasks, which is crucial to these components. Our long-fibre reinforced and continuous filament reinforced thermoplastic materials provide excellent toughness. This specific property ensures a ductile behaviour with no tendency to splinter if the components are forced to face a crash situation.

Long fibre reinforcement and continuous filament reinforcement also have the key advantage for the components mentioned that this ductile behaviour is maintained even at low temperatures and does not demonstrate the low-temperature brittleness typical of and feared on non-reinforced and short fibre-reinforced polymers. Unfortunately, this low-temperature brittleness of non- or short-fibre reinforced materials has frequently resulted in resubstitution by metallic materials.

The trends in exterior applications extend through to a modular design in the roof area, thus overcoming the separation between exterior and interior application. In addition, the development trend leads towards components not necessarily requiring painting on all exterior surfaces. This can be done using various outer skin materials with corresponding reinforcement materials underneath. With our thermoplastic composites, we are involved in creating solutions suitable for large-scale series production.