Trelleborg Sealing Solutions expands its unique capabilities in engineered performance polymer solutions by investing in the High-Performance Thermoplastics Technology and Development Center in Denver. The center delivers custom value-added capabilities for sealing, cushioning, and protection, using thermoplastics to replace metal components. This reduces mass and weight, eliminates corrosion, improves reliability, and lowers maintenance requirements.

Previously expensive to produce, advances in manufacturing, part simulation, and material development make thermoplastic composites viable for increasing applications, offering greater design flexibility than thermoset composites and metals. This makes it easier to meet application requirements while optimizing strength-to-weight ratios and physical properties.

Trelleborg’s High-Performance Thermoplastics Technology and Development Center offers custom thermoplastic materials, compounds, and geometries to meet specific application requirements. This includes products with enhanced corrosion and fire resistance and specialized compounds that can withstand challenging or niche environments for longer periods. Innovative manufacturing processes at the center can produce smaller and more complex shapes, leading to reduced-size components or multiple functions combined into one solution.

In addition, the center provides customers with access to Trelleborg’s extensive R&D resources, including simulation (mold flow and stress/strain), tribology testing, material analysis including DSC (Digital Scanning Calorimetry), TGA (Thermal Gravimetric Analysis), DMA (Dynamic Mechanical Analysis), microscopy, SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy), and compositional analysis and operational testing.

“Our thermoplastic composites offer customers products that are multifunctional, add or enhance properties, or consolidate parts,” said Brian Richards, Director of Global R&D Business Development. “Thermoplastic composites are significantly lighter, with half the density of aluminum and a sixth of steel, yet are strong with high impact resistance allowing them to replace structural elements.”

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