On September Styron Automotive participated at Plastomotive 2012, a key annual trade conference for automotive organized by SPE in Chennai. The conference, known as ‘India’s prime congregation for the Automotive Plastics Supply Chain’ was attended by global and local OEMs and its system and part suppliers. The event offered the ideal platform for Philippe Belot, Sales Director for Styron Automotive Europe & IMEA and Santosh Rathod, Account Manager for Styron Automotive in India, to introduce Styron’s styrenic-based innovations for automotive applications.
Philippe Belot started by presenting Styron as a global leader in the production of plastics. With annual sales higher than 210,000 Metric Tons for automotive segment in 2011, Styron considers Automotive as one of its strategic core markets and positions itself as an innovative partner to OEMs and their suppliers. Styron’s automotive portfolio offers a variety of styrenic-based products including ABS-based solutions under the brand name of MAGNUM and PC/ABS-based solutions under the brand name of PULSE and PULSE GX.
After this general company and portfolio introduction, Philippe gave the floor to Santosh who gave an in depth overview of the differences between Styron’s PULSE and Styron’s most recent innovation, PULSE GX Engineering Resins. Whereas PULSE solutions offer the desired heat distortion resistance, impact strength and dimensional stability, PULSE GX50 is a new and even more economical mixture of polycarbonate (PC) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) in a blend ratio that also provides outstanding resistance to heat distortion as well as high impact strength at low temperatures.
Both presenters concluded by highlighting the fact that, apart from offering key products for interior car components, Styron works more and more closely together with car manufacturers to look at how Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) can further optimize their designs. When the ultimate goal is to reduce weight and this downgauging trend coincides with reducing costs, OEMs are eager to know more. During the presentation, Styron gave a couple of specific examples of how their simulations can predict the behaviour of the selected polymer and recommended further optimization of the incumbent material in the production process and/or the part design.
