Henkel Best Use of Adhesives Award 2011

By: Rudolf Neumayer

Like in the last 2 years Henkel offers again a price for the Best Use of Adhesives. It starts to become a tradition and it seems to turn into a routine for Henkel. Tradition “yes” – Routine “no”.  Routine has got the flavour of boredom and stagnation. Formula Student has proven that a continuously improving organization, a professional cross-fertilisation of “Best Practices” combined with a winning spirit must not be mixed up with routine.
As technologies are improving and new teams with new ideas are entering the competition, also the bonding and sealing experiences will lead to optimized or new applications.

Henkel Adhesive Technologies with its brands Loctite and Teroson is the world leading supplier of high tech adhesives and adhesive engineering. Therefore we want to offer the award for the
 “Best use of adhesives”. The target of this award is to find the team leveraging bonding technology best.

You can find information on bonding on the homepage of Henkel following the link to the Loctite pages. On the following page you can access literature and get an overview of the various bonding and sealing technologies: http://www.loctite.de/country-selector-29497.htm. If you have got specific questions, you can also contact us at technischer.service(at)henkel.com. Please identify your request using “Formula Student” in the headline of your e-mail.

How can you apply for the award?

You have to deliver 2 Application Case Histories.

• One has to be an application in the power train, e.g. bonding a cylindrical part for high load transmission or sealing parts of the engine or ……
• The other one has to describe an application related to the body of the car, like bonding fiber reinforced plastics with high tech epoxies or MS-Polymers or bonding metal parts with acrylics or……

Those two applications have to be described in detail and documented with photos:
The description has to cover the following topics:

• Challenge
  Describe the application, the materials used, and the design/geometry of the bondline.
• Requirement specification
  write down the requirement specification regarding strength, temperature resistance short term and long term, chemical and environmental resistance (like resistant against ATF...), …..
• Adhesive selection
  Describe the reason why you selected the specific adhesive for this application in the following way that you name the properties why you chose the adhesive and which advantage you gained. E.g.: Property: Room Temperature Cure – Advantage: no need for additional energy or heat.
• Bonding
  Describe the preparation of the bonding surfaces (Cleaning, abrading, ….).

• How you applied the adhesive (on which of the parts, how much, in beads or spread over the whole surface…..)

• How you cured the adhesive (by heat, mixing 2 components, humidity…)
• Testing
  Have you done preliminary tests? If so, what did you test and how did you test?

The number of photos/graphs supporting your description is up to you.

You can improve your chances on winning the award, by adding more bonding applications: These applications can be other body or power train applications or other applications of any kind, not only on the car, but also from the periphery, e.g. the helmet……. For these additional Applications you only need a photo and a short description of the application and the adhesive you have chosen (max: ½ page A4 per application incl. photo).

This multipage-pdf should not exceed 40 MB.

Please submit your applications by July 17^th, 2011  12:00 CEST at latest on the page “Team Deadlines” (=> MyTeam => Events => Deadlines).

The best teams will be invited to present their applications during the Hockenheim Event, where also the award will be handed over.
The best 3 teams will be rewarded!

We are looking forward to receiving the testimonials of your creativity and professionalism.  

Henkel Adhesive Technologies

Contact Address:

Henkel AG & Co. KGaA
Standort München,
Rudolf Neumayer,
Abt. Technical Customer Service
Gutenbergstr. 3
85748 Garching Hochbrück

e-mail: technischer.service(at)henkel.com
or:  rudolf.neumayer(at)henkel.com

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