Dr.Thomas Langhans
 

After being an assistant professor for acoustics at the University of Goettingen, Thomas Langhans founded his own company, a spin-off company supported by the German government to establish the field of digital signal processing regarding NVH. After selling the company to LMS, Thomas became a technical director for measurement and CAE systems. In 2000, Thomas joined C&A (now IAC) as R&D director for Europe based in Heidelberg. Followed by a 2 year stay in Korea as R&D director Asia he is now working for Autoneum as Head of Design, Engineering and Acoustics Asia based in Shanghai.

New Materials for Acoustic Design

New materials and technologies for weight reduction and improved acoustics will be presented.

Hybrid acoustics: for many years vehicle acoustic treatments were mainly based on two well separated product families: on one side, conventional heavy acoustic packages with high insulation and low absorption performance, on the other side, lightweight acoustic packages with high absorption and relatively low insulation. This presentation describes a simple acoustical multilayer that can constitute the basis for the construction of sound package parts with high flexibility.The multilayer is constituted by two porous layers with an impervious barrier (e.g. a plastic film or a thin heavy layer) in between. It is shown that by suitable designing the mechanical properties of the top porous layer it is possible to largely tune the balance between the acoustic absorption and the acoustic insulation of the multilayer. On top of this, the weight of the intermediate barrier layer provides a further design variable that can help achieving the desired performance/weight ratio. The physical mechanism related to the vibro-acoustical behavior of the multilayer are described in detail, both by means of simulations and by means of experimental data. It is shown that the presented multilayer is an ideal candidate, thanks also to its simplicity, for the production of sound package parts able to optimally adapt their absorption/insulation balance to the surrounding acoustical environment.

Hybrid acoustics:

Tailor-made felt technology for optimal acoustic:

Felt blanks for bulkhead and floor components in vehicles which are manufactured using the newly defined Rotating Injection Fiber process offer significant weight reductions together with improved acoustic performance. The IFP-R2 production system based on the Rotating Injection Fiber process has been newly designed according to the optimized manufacturing procedure and improved its environmental performance.

Near field engine encapsulation to improve heat storage in the powertrain.

Baseline for this development was to store the heat in the powertrain for a longer time, this will then lead to reduced C02 emissions during the re-start process of the engine due to higher body temperature. Both body-mounted and engine mounted encapsulations are discussed with their related advantages/disadvantages. It is shown that engine encapsulations can considerably support CO2 reductions through heat storage of up to 2.5%.

Performance and lightweight underfloor systems:Improves aerodynamics through underfloor panels and under engine shields .100% glass-free PET and fully recyclable ,Combination of absorption and high stiffness ,based on a patented material-process combination. Excellent acoustics with lower weight: 1.5dB(A) sound pressure level improvement compared to solid plastics combined with 45% lower weigth can be achieved.