Under this tagline Victrex Polymer Solutions is presenting new applications and products based on its high performance polymers at K 2013. The company will focus its attention on topics related to the automotive and aerospace industries along with metal replacement.
"Each new product and application development is all about identifying market trends early and taking them into account while facing new challenges at the same time," explains Rainer Müller, commercial manager Europe. Although that result might sound simple enough, it takes plenty of expertise, commitment, and market knowledge to achieve. Take the aerospace industry, for example: it can take months before the most suitable material with regard to cost-benefit aspects is found, approved, and implemented as an application. Along with their unique combination of properties, PEEK polymers also score points here with their established qualifications and approvals by manufacturers such as Airbus and Boeing. Metals cannot be replaced in this way until such qualifications and approvals are completed. The latest glass fibre-reinforced product, Victrex PEEK 90GL30BLK EU, meets the current requirements of both the American and the European regulatory authorities, including the EU Commission Regulation 10/2011 (Plastics Implementation Measure, PIM) which will be fully implemented by the end of 2015.
The performance of the PAEK product portfolio extends across a broad temperature range - and also under extreme operating conditions, such as damp, chemically aggressive environments or cyclical stresses. "In that way, decisive opportunities can be developed and often make it possible to replace metals which are much heavier or to replace other polymers which are unable to stand up over the long term under the specified conditions," says Müller.
Three concrete examples bear this out: Victrex PEEK 90HMF40, which was recently qualified by Airbus, permits weight savings of up to 40% versus aluminium. The high strength polymer is characterized by up to 100 times longer fatigue strength and up to 20% higher specific strength and stiffness as compared with aluminium 7075-T6 used in the aerospace industry under the same conditions. Broad use of the high-performance polymer is bound to reduce weight, fuel consumption and emissions.
In automotive construction, components made of Victrex WG polymers with optimized slip/friction properties extend the service life and raise the efficiency of components, including electric pumps, for example.  As compared to other high-performance plastics, the coefficient of friction exhibited by Victrex polymers is even lower, depending on the requirement profile, and remains stable over the life of the product. This is great news for motor vehicle manufacturers in light of extended warranty periods or the new targets for reduced CO2 emissions recently established by the EU.