The Usage of Lightweight Materials in Hazardous Areas: Flex-Metal-Mesh

Abstract

The usage of lightweight materials is in general highly preferred due to better mechanical behaviours of the materials (e.g. fibres). Besides this, the possibility to influence economic effects in a positive way is also important, which can be realised in saving material costs due to a certain weight reduction or focussing on fuel consumption reduction especially in the transportation sector. So the main industry sector has a certain interest to support the research and adaptation or rather replacement of state of the art materials with lightweight material. This paper shows a possibility to implement a metallic lightweight material, called Flex-Metal-Mesh, within the protective sector, which is rather reluctant to change standard materials and to adopt new developments. Therefore, the challenge is to convince people that this system fulfils the wanted requirements and is working in a proper and reproducible and therefore in a reliable way. For this reason, the potential of the here mentioned system was investigated in various experimental tests and simulation procedures. The focus of the following documentary deals with the validation aspect of such a system.