Dow Automotive Systems offers polyurethane-based elastic adhesives that provide benefits such as sealing, multi-material bonding, processing and cost advantages to suppliers and manufacturers in the transportation industry. Typical end uses for elastic adhesives include passenger vehicles, light and heavy trucks, buses, light- and high-speed rail cars, and agricultural and construction vehicles. While elastic bonding adhesives has been in use for more than 55 years in automotive applications alone, it is also evolving to enable innovations that will extend far into the future. In addition to windshields and backlites, manufacturers are now using elastic adhesives to bond fixed glass, glass panoramic roofs, and hardware to vehicle bodies. Electric cars are already being powered by transparent solar cells that are part of the glass.The bonded glass adds strength, stability, stiffness and safety to all vehicles. In addition, vehicle structures are evolving to include a broad mix of lighter-weight substrates to enable weight reduction. Paint formulations are changing rapidly to meet consumer preferences and sustainability goals. All of these trends affect the performance requirements for elastic adhesives. Next-Generation Options To support these advanced manufacturing requirements, high modulus and ultra-high modulus elastic adhesives have been developed to deliver stiffness and torsional rigidity, durability, thermal expansion management and environmental sealing properties. These adhesives can also bond multiple substrates to accommodate lightweight multi-material designs. For example, a new bonding solution for global automotive manufacturers meets high-performance and safety standards in emerging markets like China, Russia, and Brazil. This new elastic adhesive, a high-performance primerless-to-paint silanated urethane, offers great stability. The adhesive is used for the structural bonding and sealing of stationary vehicle glass, including panoramic roofs, liftgates, windshields, backlites, quarter glass, glass hardware, door glass, and mixed-material bonding. Its primerless formulation helps reduce the emission impact and the carbon footprint to help meet customer sustainability targets. Moisture-curable urethane adhesive typically requires paint primer in the glass bonding process. However, a new material* does not require a paint primer, which reduces the presence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), simplifies the glass bonding process, reduces packaging waste and decreases production costs. In addition, it offers a long shelf life stability, as well as great adhesion capability with hard-to-bond automotive paint surfaces. The adhesive’s performance in both stability and adhesion will enable more automotive manufacturers to use the primerless-to-paint technology within their glass bonding assembly lines. Similar products have already helped the automotive industry eliminate 240,000 lbs of VOCs and 60,000 lbs of primer waste every year. Another new elastic adhesive for glass bonding has been created to decrease VOC emissions and improve interior air quality. Customers in many markets, including commercial transportation, are concentrating on the quality of the interior air. This adhesive is making a positive contribution to that issue. * BETASEAL™ 16709 glass bonding adhesive. Source: http://www.adhesivesmag.com