Expanded foam helps reduce auto chassis weight

04 October 2011

European car-makers were introduced to the lightweight ‘inrekor’ chassis last year with the promise of vehicle weight reductions of up to 30% using the patented technology. If the core chassis weight is reduced, a smaller, lighter engine can be specified to achieve the same performance; a lighter engine requires less structure to support it and so the chassis weight can be reduced even further, and there are consequent beneficial effects on other sub systems from suspension, to wheels, brakes and many other components.

The inventor of inrekor, Stewart Morley says that in a typical family car, a lightweight inrekor chassis and the resulting weight savings in other components would mean an average weight reduction of 300kg; across Europe this would produce annual fuel savings of 10 billion litres and a CO2 reduction of 50 million tonnes.

inrekor is an ultra-lightweight sandwich structure which uses an ARPRO expanded foam core with bonded skins to give exceptional strength-to-weight performance. The first inrekor applications are already in production.