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The air filters in an air intake system permanently remove foreign particles such as dust, dirt and soot from the intake air, thereby maintaining the performance of the engine and protecting it from damage. The filter performance is typically a trade-off between pressure loss, load capacity and efficiency. Exhaust gas regulations and customer requirements such as filter duration always determine air filter development. For this reason Röchling Automotive has developed a new software tool for estimating air filter lifetime which simplifies and significantly shortens the pre-development of filter elements with regard to filtration and pressure drop. In addition, it is possible to compare the different filter geometries (number of pleats, height, paper etc.) in order to limit the number of different filter elements, for example for a complete series of cars.

Automotive manufacturers are looking for ways to reduce the CO2 emissions of their vehicle fleet. Increasingly, OEMs are focusing on intelligent air flap systems, which enable high cooling capacity through maximum air flow when they are in an open position. In a closed position, they reduce drag and the time necessary to bring the engine up to operating temperatures. Electric vehicles like the Tesla S benefit from Röchling's Active Grille Shutters (AGS) with a total of four independently controlled flap systems and the new generation of actuators. The module extends the driving range through improved aerodynamics and ensures optimized battery cooling and temperature control. Maximum benefit can be achieved if the controlled air flap systems are mounted right in the front to optimize aerodynamics. While adaptive air flap systems are increasingly used to improve aerodynamics today, they can be a key component of a future thermoacoustic engine encapsulation.

In today's vehicles underbody parts are absolutely necessary to reach a certain performance level regarding fuel saving, corrosion protection, driving performance and exterior as well as interior noise. With the constant demand for additional parts, which means additional weight on the car, lightweight materials have come more and more into the focus of development work. LWRT (low weight reinforced thermoplastic) is the acronym for this material group. The ongoing success of such materials in underbody applications that compared to compact materials such as GMT (glass mat reinforced thermoplastic) is the weight saving of up to 50 %, or in other words, with LWRT you can cover twice as much surface then with GMT. The production process is compression molding, but with low pressure because LWRT-material needs only partial compact areas, most regions of these parts can have a density even below 0.5 g/cm3.