Transportation is seeing significant changes with the move from combustion engines to more sustainable solutions.
There is a clear trend towards electric vehicles (EVs) and new mobility concepts for urban and mass transportation via trains, buses, planes, and ships. These rapid industrywide changes promote innovation in many areas.
Whether an EV, plane, train, bus, or marine vessel is transporting people or goods, all modes of transportation should be rapid, reliable, safe, and comfortable. Transportation must also be cost-effective, durable, and able to meet customers' demands for new travel experiences.
Carpet tapes and other flooring tape solutions significantly and positively contribute to these requirements.
Material, repair, and operation (MRO) companies, vehicle manufacturers, and flooring manufacturers must overcome numerous challenges concerning flooring solutions in mass transportation.
This article explores innovative carpet tapes and non-textile flooring (NTF) in a mass transportation setting.
Flooring Applications in Mass Transportation
Planes, trains, buses, and boats are complex vehicles based on carefully designed interactions between numerous components.
Manufacturers and MRO companies must consider the role of flooring applications in these vehicles’ day-to-day operation because flooring solutions represent a key factor in overall vehicular safety. Each component, including carpet tape and adhesives, must meet exceptionally high safety standards, especially regarding fire protection potential.
These safety considerations extend beyond fire safety. Protecting structures from moisture ingress can help improve passenger safety, reduce maintenance requirements, and extend a vehicle’s overall working life.
Passengers trust existing foundational materials, so they focus largely on comfort and the overall travel experience.
Flooring solutions and small components such as carpet tape can enhance the passenger experience, eliminating wrinkles, bubbles, and edge lift by securely fixing flooring. This is a key consideration in ensuring safe and comfortable boarding or disembarking, particularly for passengers with luggage.
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The right flooring solution can reduce maintenance efforts, defects, downtime, and costs for vehicle manufacturers and MRO companies. Innovative materials can also help reduce a vehicle’s environmental footprint.
Key Challenges and Differences in Flooring Applications
All mass transportation vehicles face common challenges through their flooring applications. NTF applications like toilets, bathrooms, kitchens, or entrance areas necessitate water barriers to protect from moisture ingress and corrosion. Special flooring coverings are used, and they must be securely fixed to panels without wrinkles or gaps.
Rapid flooring installation and secure fixation with no wrinkles or bubbles are important in all vehicles, particularly in high foot traffic areas and at edges.
Other challenges arise when flooring must be removed or replaced during maintenance. Strong bonds may lead to adhesive residue, requiring specialized tools to remove carpet or NTF. This is time-consuming and could damage flooring panels or require replacing expensive composite materials.
Once a flooring cover has been removed, strong adhesives may make it difficult to separate out its various components, hindering the flooring’s potential reuse or recycling.
Companies’ requirements and goals around sustainability continue to grow, so it is important to be aware of how flooring components are used and how these can be managed at the end of their working life.
There are also significant differences between flooring applications in different types of mass transportation.
Trains and buses, for example, primarily employ contact adhesives to bond floor covering to panels. These panels are manufactured from cost-efficient materials such as plywood, aluminum, or fiberglass-reinforced plastic.
However, planes use expensive, lightweight composite panels, which typically require specialized pressure-sensitive double-sided adhesive carpet tapes to bond firmly while avoiding panel damage.
Materials utilized inside mass transportation vehicles must meet strict standards for passenger safety. Several specifications and tests apply to tapes used in aircraft, while the material used in trains must adhere to specifications like EN445545-2.
Marine vessels routinely employ thicker carpets than other vehicles to improve passenger comfort. Weight is less important for marine vehicles, and thicker carpets allow better noise vibration harshness, dampening, and a more luxurious feeling underfoot.
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Improving Mass Transportation Efficiency with Carpet and Flooring Tapes
Innovative carpet tapes and NTF solutions have helped to drive advances in aircraft flooring applications for many years. Their advantage over traditional installation methods is beginning to revolutionize flooring applications in other mass transportation areas, including trains, buses, and marine vehicles.
These advantages include:
Ease of Installation
Double-sided carpet tapes like Saint-Gobain’s Biolink® relink 2318 are easier to install than contact adhesives. They can be rapidly applied, providing immediate fixation without curing time or extensive training. They also allow carpet repositioning to avoid wrinkles or bubbles, ensuring rapid installation and improved results.
Secure Fixation
Once installed, carpet tapes deliver a reliable bond between the surface panel and flooring. Their edge protection properties avoid carpet lift, allowing easier and safer movement even in highly frequented areas like aisles or entrances. These tapes keep the flooring where it should be by eliminating any potential shrinking or movement.
Unparalleled Removability
The flooring can be repositioned during installation and securely fixed at its final location. However, when flooring covers need to be removed, they must be removed in one piece without tape tear, residue, or damage.
This degree of removability helps to streamline maintenance, limit downtime, and minimize cost implications because there is no need for tools, post-treatments, cleaning, or additional repairs.
Safety
Tapes like the Biolink® relink 2318 meet the highest safety standards set by the aircraft industry and are qualified to accommodate all applicable flammability requirements.
Other NTF barrier tapes prevent moisture ingress, protecting passengers and structures. EN 445545-2 approval is a main consideration for train flooring, and all standard flooring solutions must meet this to ensure reliable passenger protection.
Footprint Reduction
Flooring tapes are lightweight components, ideally suited in applications where minimizing weight is essential. They leave no residue and are easy to separate, streamlining the recycling or reuse of flooring components, resulting in less waste, cleaning, and effort when the flooring is replaced.
The Future of Mass Transportation Flooring Solutions
Although generally unseen and modern transportation largely focuses on other areas of the vehicles, flooring tapes remain key to increasing performance while saving time, effort, and money in buses, trains, planes, and marine vessels.
Acknowledgments
Produced from materials originally authored by Alexander Dewald from Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions.
This information has been sourced, reviewed, and adapted from materials provided by Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions.
For more information on this source, please visit Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions.