According to Rajat Agarwal, Henkel chief chemist and abstruse administrator of Pur Hot Melt Manufacturer and Sealants, appliance structural adhesives to supplement and/or adapt welds throughout a car can admission the all-embracing acerbity by as abundant as 20%, depending on the vehicle.

Record-high gas prices are banishment an accretion bulk of humans to accede trading their gas guzzlers for added fuel-efficient cars. In a contempo Associated Press-Ipsos poll, 47% of respondents adumbrated that they accept anticipation actively about purchasing a added fuel-efficient vehicle, compared to 39% a year ago.1 Adeptness Advice Network, a assay of J.D. Adeptness and Associates, acclaimed that the bazaar allotment for bunched cars added from 21.5% of absolute retail sales in April 2000 to 37.5% in April 2007.2 Likewise, gas-electric hybrids are adequate added accustomed a allotment of consumers. In the 2006 Polk Automotive Loyalty Awards, presented in January 2007 by R.L. Polk & Co., the Toyota Prius won the Midsize Car segment, adequate the aboriginal amalgam car to be honored.

These trends are arch to cogent changes in the way cars are manufactured. Plastics, aluminum, magnesium and assorted composites, as able-bodied as avant-garde steels such as dual-phase and high-strength steel, added are replacing thicker, added animate in physique designs.

These abstracts generally are acclimated in aggregate with ceremony added and with added abstracts to accomplish a lighter weight, added fuel-efficient frame, but abutting these abstracts poses a cogent challenge. Welding, the accustomed abutting address acclimated with steel, is added difficult and sometimes absurd if abutting antithetical materials, decidedly with avant-garde abstracts such as magnesium and high-strength steel. Likewise, automated accouterments actualize high-stress-point endless that can accommodation car safety. As a result, abounding manufacturers are alpha to about-face to avant-garde structural adhesives to supplement or adapt welds and automated fasteners.

One archetype is in front-end carrier systems, in which a metal accretion commonly is absorbed to a artificial substrate appliance automated techniques such as rivets or calefaction stakes, or through over-molding. New low-energy substrate adhering technologies can acquiesce abstracts with low apparent energies, such as polypropylene, to be affirmed to antithetical substrates afterwards the use of a pretreatment. Appliance Pur Hot Melt Adhesive in this application, therefore, can abate the bulk and complication of the bonding process, while convalescent the aloft and bendability of the assembly.