Improved Coefficient of Friction and Bushing Longevity

The automotive interior market is one of Saint-Gobain’s core businesses, our solutions facilitate linear and rotational movement in headrests and vehicle seats. With over 30 years of experience designing and manufacturing bushings and bearings our knowledge and expertise is sought by OEM’s and tier one’s when new challenges present themselves. With the future advent of autonomous driving becoming a reality, it is not only anticipated, but known that the next generation of vehicle interiors will not be confined by today’s vehicle structure, opening up the realms of possibility. Seats will be created with more accessories and creature comforts, such as adjustment options, that will all add to the weight of the seat assembly increasing the load conditions for the bushings and bearings used. To facilitate these additional features and to offer users a faultless experience, comfort during seat adjustment that minimizes noise and vibration will be the desired result. Extended component lifetime will be needed as interiors become more flexible allowing for multiple adjustments and more configurations than today’s cars. Additionally, recliner adjusting speeds will increase to meet ever-improving specifications.

The NORGLIDE^® HP material was specifically designed to meet and exceed the rigorous demands of the next generation of recliners.

Power recliner bushing applications will become more demanding from a standpoint of load and speed. The additional accessories and creature comforts in future designs will add additional weight to the recliner. Therefore, OEMs are requiring tier one recliner manufacturers to increase load and speed capabilities. The NORGLIDE^® HP PRO material has been specifically engineered to increase bushing life and meet the critical coefficient of friction (COF) requirements.

The recliner bushing has two main functions to ensure operational success. Firstly, the bushing must support the increased high load requirements being set by the OEMs while providing extended life when compared to a typical PTFE-type bushing. Second, the bushing must deliver excellent friction control, minimizing non-linear friction; i.e. stick slip and stiction. By eliminating stick slip phenomena, it will be able to reduce unwanted noise and vibration and ensure a high level of comfort during recliner operation.

To achieve this, the NORGLIDE^® HP material is uniquely designed to optimize tribological performance in grease lubricated conditions. Specially formulated HP material fillers also contribute to the superior wear performance in efforts to increase bushing life. Saint-Gobain’s extensive tribological knowledge and experience coupled with engineer to engineer service provides our customers with a timely solution, even with the most challenging problems. Saint-Gobain can also offer application testing to validate or optimize more complex tribological problems to assure optimum performance and first-class customer experience.