Duroplast

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Trabant 601 car body is made of Duroplast[1]

Duroplast is a composite

fiber-reinforced plastic similar to fiberglass
.

Use and composition

The German Democratic Republic regularly encountered shortages of steel and had little to no iron reserves of their own. As a result, state-owned automobile manufacturer

German Reunification in 1991. A light, yet strong material, Duroplast is made of recycled material: cotton waste and phenol resins.[5]
Because it is formed in a press, it is more easily applied to volume car production than fiberglass.

Disposal

Duroplast is difficult to dispose of responsibly, a similar problem encountered with fiberglass. As discarded Trabants began to fill junkyards after 1991, creative solutions were devised for recycling them. One was developed by a Berlin biotechnology company, which experimented with bacteria to consume the body in twenty days.[6][7] Urban legends, depicted in the movie Black Cat, White Cat and described in a song by the Serbian band Atheist Rap, described recycling Duroplast by feeding the cars to pigs, sheep and other farm animals.

In the late 1990s, Sachsenring's developed a disposal solution in which the body shells were shredded and used as an aggregate in cement blocks for pavement construction. This was featured in an episode of the program

PBS TV channel.[5]

Public perception

The use of Duroplast in Trabants and subsequent

urban myth that the Trabant is made of corrugated cardboard.[8]

References

  1. ^ "PBS - Scientific American Frontiers:Previous Shows:Transcripts:Special From Germany". PBS. 2012-03-13. Archived from the original on 2012-03-13.
  2. ^ ""Doch der erste war er"– Geschichte des Duroplastautos". UNZ (in German). 2015-12-01. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  3. ^ Purcell, Russell. "Feature: A Car for a Dollar – The Trabant". www.autos.ca. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
  4. ^ Pander, Von Jürgen (November 7, 2007). "An East German Icon Hits 50". SPIEGEL International. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
  5. ^ a b "Duroplast, on season 4, episode 2". Scientific American Frontiers. Chedd-Angier Production Company. 1993–1994. PBS. Archived from the original on 2006-01-01.
  6. .
  7. ^ Petrány, Máté (13 February 2015). "How Come Duroplast Didn't Become A Thing While Fiberglass Went Big?". Jalopnik. Retrieved 2 July 2015.