LANXESS Presents Material Solutions for ADAS
LANXESS assists manufacturers of ADAS technologies with an extensive range of HiAnt services.
LANXESS has unveiled the ADAS sensor to monitor the entirety of a vehicle’s surroundings. The sensor’s operation is based on electromagnetic waves such as radar or laser beams (LiDAR), ultrasound or imaging techniques, which significantly affect the material chosen for the sensor housing.
LANXESS has done extensive tests on numerous compounds in its range, including measurements of one-way attenuation and specific transmission and reflection as a function of frequency and material thickness. “We have numerous PBT types with Dk and Df values that make them suitable for use with the ADAS radar frequencies of 77 to 81 gigahertz that are increasingly being used,” says Dr. Christopher Hoefs, ADAS expert at the High-Performance Materials (HPM) business unit at LANXESS.
Depending on where the sensor is installed, the plastic for the housing must be extremely resistant to hydrolytic degradation. With the Pocan XHR series, LANXESS has PBT compounds at its disposal that achieve Class 4 or Class 5 – the top ratings – in the stringent SAE/USCAR2 Rev. 6 long-term hydrolysis tests of the US Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). At the same time, they are highly resistant to hot air and exhibit high elongation at break values. The compounds from the Pocan HR series are suitable for less demanding hydrolysis stability requirements. These include the fiberglass-reinforced Pocan B3233HRLT compound, which is both transparent to lasers and highly resistant in hot and humid environments, which are usually mutually exclusive properties. “This material is very well suited to joining housing components of radar or camera sensors cost-effectively using laser transmission welding, for example,” says Hoefs.
LANXESS assists manufacturers of ADAS technologies with an extensive range of HiAnt services, ranging from joint concept development for the design of components and material optimization through to cutting-edge methods in computer-aided engineering (CAE) for precisely predicting mechanical and thermal properties of components. “We also provide our partners with material data. For example, in addition to the respective Dk and Df values of compounds, developers of radar sensors receive data on the relationship between the specific transmission and reflection on the radar frequency and test body thickness,” explains Hoefs.
