27-Sep-2021 | Market Research Store
Lightweight construction has been gaining substantial fame for the past few years. The technology involves alteration in a design in such a manner that the weight poses a negligible impact on the functionality of the structure. One main objective behind launching this construction approach is to raise the loading capacity of a vehicle without adding up its dead weight. Through this technique, the safety, comfort, and assistance system of the vehicle would not be compromised. From a technological point of view, a blend of lightweight construction and the usage of advanced materials offer the greatest potential. Slashing the body weight without compromising the strength of the material is a major concern in the automotive industry. Engineers are increasingly adopting lightweight materials for designing the body, chassis, and interiors of logistic vehicles.
The researchinvolved the fabrication of an exclusive lightweight material that changes color to indicate internal damage and the possibility of early damage or failure of the equipment. The novel material is developed by the engineers of ETH Zurich and the University of Fribourg. They prepared a multi-layered material composed of plastic polymer and glass platelets, which are parallelly organized and packed using polymeric resin and make the layered coating robust and unbreakable. The innovative part of the polymer exhibited in the research is its indicative nature. By adding an indicator while developing the layered material, the indicating compound in the polymer gets activated as soon as the polymer is subjected to any additional stretching or twists, thereby changing its original color.
The fluorescent molecules used in the experiment were dedicated to determining the damage caused to the robust multi-layered product. The researchers mentioned that the color-changing property of the material is crucial to visually locate the overloaded part of the object. The extensive utilization of this novel material is likely to be observed in manufacturing parts of vehicles and aircraft, as this color-changing characteristic would significantly detect the defective part during the early stage and eventually prevent the cohesive damage of the engine.
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