Solvay has announced an important addition to complement its broad portfolio of composite materials for the automotive industry: SolvaLite 714 Prepregs, a new-generation of unidirectional carbon-fibre and woven-fabric products pre-impregnated with SolvaLite 714 epoxy resin.
These innovative prepregs offer fast-cure cycles, long outlife, and have been optimised for manufacturing automotive components, such as body panels at short compression moulding cycle times in serial production runs.
“Our new SolvaLite 714 Prepregs have been specially developed to ensure strong product robustness in large-scale industrial compression moulding processes and deliver high structural part performance,” said Greg Kelly, product manager prepregs, Solvay Composites. “They are available in a wide range of unidirectional carbon fiber reinforced and woven-fabric formats.”
SolvaLite 714 Prepregs are currently manufactured in Europe, and will be commercially available worldwide beginning in the second quarter of 2022.
In addition, Solvay recently invested in its production capability enhancements for Xencor LFT (long fibre technology). The investment includes new manufacturing assets and additional capabilities in Solvay’s Oudenaarde facility (Belgium) as well as an expansion of research and development resources at one of Solvay’s technical centres in Alpharetta, Georgia. Xencor LFT is one of the key pillars in Solvay's light-weighting portfolio, which also includes short-fibre compounds and continuous carbon-fibre composites.
Xencor LFT opens up new light-weighting potential for aluminium die-cast replacement in next-generation electric vehicles. This includes several areas of metal replacement, such as those in braking and steering, electric-drive units, inverters, and battery module protection, among others.
