These specialized tapes play a pivotal role in ensuring the seamless integration of various components,
providing structural integrity, and withstanding the demanding conditions that commercial and utility
vehicles encounter throughout their operational life. Let's delve into the crucial requirements and
features that make transportation tapes an indispensable part of the automotive manufacturing
process.
Requirements:
- Ease of Application and Assembly Streamlining: Transportation tapes must be easy to apply with minimal tooling, aiding in cost reduction and enhancing the overall efficiency of the vehicle assembly process. This requirement not only cuts down on assembly time but also contributes to improved quality and reduced labor costs.
- Form, Fit, and Function Maintenance: Once applied, these tapes must maintain their form, fit, and function over the entire lifespan of the vehicle. This becomes particularly challenging due to the severe operational and environmental conditions that commercial and utility vehicles often face, such as extended usage periods, longer distances, and exposure to diverse climates.
- Temperature Resilience: Transportation tapes must exhibit versatility in adhering over a broad temperature range, avoiding becoming brittle in sub-zero temperatures or overly soft in high-temperature environments. Additionally, they should permit the thermal expansion and contraction of components, ensuring stability under varying thermal conditions.
- Water and Moisture Resistance: Water and moisture pose significant threats to the structural integrity of vehicles. Transportation tapes need to be water-resistant, create water-tight bonds, and resist moisture absorption, expansion, or loss of adhesion when exposed to high humidity, water, or other liquids.
- Dynamic Load Endurance: Vehicles experience dynamic bending, tensile, stretching, shock, and vibration loads as they traverse rough terrains or operate at high speeds. Transportation tapes must withstand these dynamic loads to ensure the longevity of their bonds and the overall structural integrity of the vehicle.
- Dimensional Stability under Adverse Conditions: Maintaining dimensional stability becomes crucial when exposed to environmental challenges such as air, ultraviolet radiation, salt spray, and other adverse conditions. Transportation tapes must uphold clean interfaces between assemblies throughout the vehicle's lifetime.
Tape Features and Characteristics:
- Two-Sided Composition: Transportation tapes typically feature a two-sided structure comprising a substrate or carrier forming the tape's core, and adhesives on either side bonding the adherends together. Achieving a delicate balance between substrates, adhesives, and adherends is paramount for strong, durable, and long- lasting bonds.
- Carrier Materials and Conformability: Carrier materials, often foams or films, significantly impact the tape's in-plane tensile and tear strength. Foam tapes, particularly those made of polyethylene, polyurethane, or acrylic, are advantageous due to their ability to distribute loads over a larger surface area, ensuring stress reduction and increased lifespan. Polyurethane carriers, in particular, offer high strength, resilience, and viscoelastic properties.
- Adhesive Considerations: Adhesives can be heat-activated or pressure-sensitive acrylic, rubber, or silicone. Acrylic adhesives stand out as the preferred choice for transportation applications, showcasing good adhesion, aging resistance, resistance to ultraviolet radiation, and a wide operating temperature range.
- Caution with Silicone and Rubber Adhesives: Silicone adhesives, while excelling in high-temperature scenarios, may lack stiffness at lower temperatures and require additional treatments for certain materials. Similarly, rubber adhesives may age poorly, have lower resistance to ultraviolet radiation, and exhibit lower strength compared to acrylic or silicone adhesives.
Quality Assurance: Rigorous Testing Standards
Irrespective of the substrates and adhesives employed, transportation tapes undergo numerous industry-standard tests. These tests rigorously assess the tape's strength and durability under static, dynamic, and thermal loads, simulating the challenges faced by the vehicle over its entire lifespan.
Recommended Tapes:
Matrix is proud to offer a comprehensive selection of Saint-Gobain Norbond Tapes, providing a range of options in different widths and thicknesses all converted in-house. These tapes are engineered with various carriers and adhesives to meet the stringent demands of transportation applications, ensuring optimal performance in diverse environments.
Highlighted within Matrix's inventory are two specific tapes that are proven for transportation: the
Norbond A7600 and Norbond V2800.
Norbond A7600 (click here for quote):
Composition: Double-sided acrylic foam bonding tape with polyurethane core.
Properties: Outstanding viscoelastic and adhesion properties.
Applications: Suited for high- and medium-surface energy materials, including metals or ABS plastics. Ideal for interior and exterior industrial applications, as well as bus, truck, and trailer skin and roof bow bonding.
Performance: Exceeds industry standards for shear strength and bonding to high surface energy substrates, even at elevated temperatures. High elongation/expansion capability and quick adhesion build (80% of ultimate adhesion at 20 minutes).
Thickness: Standard thickness of 1.1 mm (.043 in).
Widths: Available in various widths ranging from 6 mm (0.25 in) up to 800 mm (31.5 in).
Norbond V2800 (click here for quote):
Composition: Bonding tape with black polyurethane foam substrate and high-performance, pressure-sensitive acrylic adhesive on both sides.
Properties: Durable in all weather conditions, resistant to UV light, extreme temperatures, fungi, oxidation, and ozone.
Applications: Ideal for severe exterior bonding applications such as emblems and ornamentation, trailer roof bows, panel stiffeners, and body side moldings.
Performance: Minimizes distortion by reducing stress distribution at pressure points. High tensile/shear adhesion, especially suitable for shorter pieces (less than 1 m).
Thickness: Available in various standard thicknesses from 0.030 in to 0.120 in.
Widths: Offered in widths ranging from 6 mm (0.25 in) up to 1,422 mm (56 in).
Matrix ensures access to these high-quality transportation tapes, enabling manufacturers to benefit from their exceptional technical specifications and performance characteristics.
