ZircoFlex™ - Flexible Ceramic Heat Shield
 Zircotec’s
flexible ceramic heat shield material offers superb thermal barrier
performance at minimal weight and minimal thickness.
Supplied as thin aluminium backed foil, ZircoFlex is lightweight at
only 460g/m2 and only 0.25mm thick. ZircoFlex foil is however robust and
easy
to handle. It can be cut and installed by hand or machine, and
is easily fixed in place using mechanical fasteners or high temperature
adhesives, allowing it to be integrated directly into conventional
production or maintenance operations. ZircoFlex, which is the
culmination of more than five years’ intensive research and materials
science, uses a new technology in which the ceramic material is sprayed
in the form of thousands of individual ‘platelets’ on the surface of the
foil.
ZircoFlex is available in a number of formats
- ZircoFlex I - this is ZircoFlex in its
single thickness format (as outlined above); ZI also comes with a
self-adhesive option.
- ZircoFlex II - an engineered double thickness
format offering additional thermal barrier performance and a little
more rigidity; still thin (~0.5mm) and lightweight (~1 kg/m2).
- ZircoFlex III - an engineered triple thickness
format offering yet more thermal performance. This is a relatively
rigid material that can be used to construct small self-supporting
structures, though it is still easily cut and bent to shape and is
still relatively thin (~0.85mm) and lightweight (~1.5 kg/m2).
Simple to fit
While they are close-packed to provide comprehensive heat protection,
this structure allows the foil to be bent and
manipulated to suit
different geometries, and it can even be folded tightly through 180o
without damaging the thermal
barrier.
Suitable for many applications
ZircoFlex foil may be used in a range of industries where the foil
can be used
to protect sensitive components from heat as a rapid
solution to thermal protection problems.
Proven to perform - Up to 85% temperature reduction
The ZircoFlex material offers superb thermal barrier performance. In
our performance chart we compare a leading
commercial double walled
heatshield material (5.25mm thick and 1.46 kg/m2) with just one layer of
ZircoFlex foil
(0.25mm thick and 0.46 kg/m2) plus double and triple
layered ZircoFlex. In all cases we put the heat-shield in direct
contact with the heat source (the worst case scenario) and measure the
temperature on the outer "cold" surface of each heatshield.
Measurements show that another commercial heat shield material is
only able to achieve a temperature reduction of
35% in this
arrangement, whilst the much thinner and lighter ZircoFlex foil reduces
temperatures by up to 85%.
As a result, ZircoFlex foil has already
been supplied to F1 and also to leading automotive manufacturers.
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