Within a DBU project and under the overall control of the engineers team of the Ingenieurgemeinschaft für Landwirtschaft und Umwelt (IGLU) GbR, a bus body component from nature resin with plant fibre fabric was produced and will be subjected to a one-year practice test at buses of the Braunschweiger Verkehrs AG, the Brunswick local public transport services.

Hemp in the bumper
Here, an innovative material was developed, that can also replace technologically more demanding plastics, which are presently still manufactured by using glass fibre-reinforced polyester resin. The innovation is a composite from hemp fibres and a reaction resin producible on vegetable basis, the so named PTP®, and a polymer material from vegetable oils, green cut, potatoes or sugar beets.

Environmentally-friendly material
In the construction of prototypes from linseed oilbased resin with hemp fibres, these are pressed after the so-called Sheet Moulding Compound (SMC) procedure. Until now, this widespread method was not suitable for the processing of nature fibres. This optimization result offers a crucial advantage: procedural alterations in comparison to the conventional component manufacturing are superfluous.