JoinPlas, the joint venture between technology company Continental and system supplier aft automotive, has impressed at the 18th Materialica Design + Technology Awards with its synthetic modular coupling system for thermal management in vehicles picking up a prestigious award.

The innovative coupling system saves material, reduces weight and optimises media flow in vehicles both with electric drives and with internal combustion engines. Generally vehicles require a large number of custom couplings, were each coupling variant needs a dedicated injection mould. This means high design, toolmaking and process validation costs. The modular coupling system, on the other hand, needs just two tools per diameter. The connection angle can be varied and all the production steps can be fully automatically monitored using a camera.

The optimised basic design of the coupling system enables material savings of up to 15% and a correspondingly lower weight. The design also means improved performance because pressure losses are minimised while line diameters are also smaller. The right mixture of rubber, polyamide and aluminium materials and an ingenious line geometry ensure the system has adequate inherent stability.

The smart use of existing components and the modular construction of the JoinPlas coupling system impressed the Materialica Award 2020 judges, as did the simplified production and the future-focused use in thermal management of batteries. The judges said, “This CO2-efficient solution shows the way for future mobility.”

JoinPlas, which was set up this year, will begin production of these high-performance synthetic couplings for future mobility at the beginning of 2021. The joint venture partners Continental and aft automotive have been jointly developing synthetic connectors for cooling circuits, turbochargers and charge-air coolers since the end of 2016 and are now further extending this expertise to hybrid and electric vehicles.