Trèves (France)
The institution
Founded in 1836, Trèves is a recognized automotive supplier, Specialist in acoustic and thermal comfort, also brings new functionalities to the market.
An international group employing 4,500 people with 300 R&D engineers, it has 23 industrial sites in 17 countries. With its long experience, Trèves can implement unique technologies of thermocompression, thermoforming, foaming and assembly. It provides customized solutions tailored to the specific needs of its customers. In the constant pursuit of excellence, Trèves focuses on four product families: interior, trunk, body and powertrain. Trier contributes to the constant improvement of vehicles for more comfort and silence at the right price.
Main tasks in SSUCHY
Trèves concentrates on the WP 7, 8 and 9. The main goal for Trèves is to substitute petro-based sandwich “semi-structural” technologies like the Baypreg (GF/PU) used for trunk loadfloors or package tray applications for example by lightweight 100% bio-based composite sandwich with both almost continuous natural fibers reinforcements as well as bio-matrices binders either thermoset or thermoplastic with excellent static, creeping (70 °C to 90 °C typically with 100 kg load on a 150 mm diameter for example), humidity (95%), static punching (100 kg on 20 mm diameter for example) and vibration damping properties.
Significant infrastructure and equipment
The CERA is a fully equipped central R&D center having all prototyping necessary equipment for manufacturing injection parts (foams) or thermoforming any carpet, heavy layer or composites with short or long fibers reinforcements (single layer, double layer or sandwich with hard foam or honeycomb spacers).
A physico-chemical and an acoustic laboratories are also available in the CERA for carrying out any automotive specifications tests on samples or parts: static, creeping (in climatic chambers of various sizes), fatigue, absorption (airflow resistance, impedance tube, Alpha Cabin), insulation (Petite Cabine, RTC III), damping (Mocovu, Oberst) and part Transmission Loss (coupled reverberant rooms), as well as 3D printing of small parts.
In addition, the CERA is equipped with standard simulation thermo-mechanical FEM tools: static, creeping, thermal conduction, thermal radiation, crash, foaming as well as acoustic simulation: Rayon-VTM-TL (BEM-FEM-PEM), VA-One (SEA), Transfer Matrix Method (TMM) for porous materials (Maine 3A / NOVA), micro-macro software (Scalingcell from Matelys).
The CERA also has a semi-anechoïc chamber, as well as complementary equipment for the acoustic laboratory: porosimeter and Olny-Panneton three microphones impedance tube for the indirect characterization of Biot parameters rather than inverse methods used today.