Freudenberg readies materials for new mobility landscape

As the automotive industry moves into a new era of mobility, suppliers will face greater challenges in terms of material science innovation, and those who convert those challenges into opportunities likely will thrive.

Sealing supplier Freudenberg-NOK is getting ready for new hybrid and electric powered vehicles by preparing to address a number of new requirements for its parts in these new vehicle technologies.

The firm discussed some of these next-generation technologies during a Society of Automotive Engineers webinar held Nov. 7.

Electric engines will push thermal management requirements higher, new safety standards will be established and electrical transfer will be enhanced. The firm has a good reason to be in front of these trends. In July, CEO Claus Moehlenkamp revealed that up to 70 percent of its automotive sales could be at risk if it does not embrace electric-mobility and fuel cell opportunities.

"There are changes coming to the classic mobility marketplace," said Joe Walker, Freudenberg-NOK's global technology director of materials and laboratory services. "The importance of dealing with suppliers that recognize that difference and have technology plans and road maps in place to address the changing landscape is going to be very important to the Tier 1s and the OEMs."

Within hybrids, Walker said original equipment manufacturers will want to remove as much friction from the system as possible to allow for an efficient conversion of energy to mobility. One key hurdle for sealing suppliers like Freudenberg-NOK is that fill for life fluids and lubricants are getting less and less viscous.

Walker said this represents a major change to conventional rubber-type sealing currently on engines today because springless seals never really touch the shaft, they run on a very thin layer of fluid.

If the lubricant becomes thinner, the seal has less lubricant to address that heat. That creates a bigger challenge for the sealing providers because of the thermal problems. The tradeoff is there is increased efficiency of the shaft or gears being lubricated. But Walker said longevity in the seals for these moving elements is impacted.

These fluids also have very aggressive formulations so the lubricant never breaks down within the lifetime of the vehicle. These additives are also aggressive toward rubber and plastics. Walker said materials must evolve with these aggressive additives.

Within electric engines, thermal management becomes a bigger issue. These batteries generate a lot of heat, and Walker said managing that heat — as well as the safety that goes along with having a lithium ion battery — will require greater material requirements for pressure regulation, thermal insulation and fireproof systems.

"If the suppliers are brought in up-front and interfaced properly with the sub component designers, we can become an integral part," Walker said. "People who design batteries and lubricants are not the same people who design seals for them. What the suppliers have to do is form some partnerships."

Lightweighting is a challenge that isn't going away, according to Ray Szparagowski, Freudenberg-NOK's technical director for automotive and high-performance plastics. His area focuses on converting metal parts to lighter-weight plastic parts. But the one challenge that OEMs consistently face is that the replacement part often times need to be redesigned.

Szparagowski said customers will have expectations, or simply ask Freudenberg to make a plastic version of a metal part, but that doesn't always work.

"The critical things are you get a lot of people who have ideas and they want to make materials do things they can't," Szparagowski said. "Metal replacements for weight, they sometimes want the part in the same shape, but you can't make it in the same shape as it was because it needs to be modified for the material properties. You have to redesign things for the change in material.

"We get the best results when we work early in the design phase. Then we can ask questions like 'Do you really need this much space or this much distance?' We can adjust things to compensate. If we're trying to replace something that's already been tested or is further along in the design phase, you handcuff yourself."

Freudenberg-NOK deals in many industries beyond automotive. Both Walker and Szparagowski cited oil and gas and aerospace as industries that deal with similar challenges of thermal and fluid management as these new vehicle technologies.

The key will be taking those solutions and making them work within an automotive industry price point, one challenge that will remain universal.

"The challenge is always the price point," Walker said. "We deal in tradeoffs. These solutions are not going to be for free. Our challenge as manufacturers is to improve as much as we can in our designs and manufacturing methodology to try to hold these price points as best we can."