Standard press lamination techniques cannot meet cost and volume requirements as envisioned for large scale users such as the transportation industries.
The concept of metal-to-metal laminates is not new to engineers, but the successful development of continuous processing has now, in effect, served to make available a new material based on a polypropylene core and metallic skins.
Various other polymers have been successfully used in the laboratory on a variety of metallic substrates, and this indicates that an entirely new family of material systems is available for exploitation.
The total amount of data generated so far by all investigators are limited, but strongly suggest several uses by the automotive, construction and appliance industries and in applications where increases in specific stiffness and/or sound attenuation are of interest.