Solutions for the automotive industry, geotextiles and filtration will be among end-use applications highlighted by Oerlikon Polymer Processing Solutions at this year’s Techtextil in Frankfurt from April 23 to 26.

The company reports that in today’s modern passenger cars an average of 30-35 kg of yarn is employed to ensure safety and comfort via products such as airbags.

Airbags have traditionally been made from polyamide but due to the ever increasing variety of airbag applications and the ever growing size of the systems, polyester is also often used today, depending on application requirements and cost/benefit considerations.

“Yarns produced with Oerlikon Barmag technologies meet all the high quality standards for airbags which must guarantee maximum safety for the occupants, and without any loss of function in any climate, anywhere in the world, for the entire service life of the vehicle,” says Dr Jen Supra, Oerlikon Barmag’s technology manager for technical yarns. “Seat belts also play a life-saving role in vehicles. They must be able to withstand tensile forces of more than three tons and at the same time stretch in a controlled manner in an emergency to reduce the load in the event of a collision.”

A seat belt consists of around 300 high-strength filament yarns spun from around 100 single filaments.

Oerlikon Barmag’s patented Single Filament Layer technology ensures a high tenacity (HT) yarn process that is as sophisticated as it is gentle.

Geotextiles

With low elongation, ultra-high tenacity and high rigidity, technical yarns meanwhile provide outstanding properties for geotextiles for applications such as geogrids which are employed in the base course system under the asphalt of roads.

Geotextiles usually have extremely high yarn counts of up to 24,000 denier and system concepts from Oerlikon Barmag simultaneously produce three filament yarns with 6,000 denier each. As a result, fewer yarns can be plied together to achieve the required geotextile yarns performance standard in a cost and energy efficient way.

The company’s geotextile portfolio is complemented by Oerlikon Nonwoven’s spunbond technology for the production of polyester or polypropylene nonwovens characterised by high production capacities and yields with low energy consumption.

hycuTEC

Also showcased at the company’s stand C55/56 in Hall 12 at Techtextil 2024 will be the hycuTEC hydrocharging solution – a unique technology for charging nonwovens to increase filter efficiency by over 99.99%. For meltblown producers, this means a 30% material saving with significantly increased filtration performance. For the end user of face masks, for example, this is noticeable in a gain in comfort due to significantly reduced breathing resistance. With significantly lower water and energy consumption, the patent-pending technology is said to be both future-proof and sustainable.

www.oerlikon.com