This paper highlights the increasing penetration of nonwovens in automotive sector and their suitability for certain applications (e.g. sound insulation). Suitable technologies and raw materials to process insulations are discussed and remarks regarding their advantages and disadvantages are pointed out. As the recyclability is one of the main drivers of automotive industry, especially in Europe, a deeper insight has been given to natural, renewable resources, and their advantages and downsides have been underlined, in comparison with some traditional materials.

Keywords: automotive, nonwowens, sound insulation, technologies, renewable resources, recyclability

1. Automotive industry- a high potential market for textiles:

Textiles are used in cars for a wide variety of purposes: to enhance comfort, thermal insulation, design, vehicle safety and more often required acoustic properties.

Despite of the fact that textiles represent only 3% of the raw materials used in motor vehicle (compared with 60% steel, 20% plastics, 15% aluminum, etc.) [I], considering the amount of existing vehicles worldwide (table I) one can see that automotive industry represents a high potential market for the textile industry. The worldwide growth of automotive textiles, disseminated by group of products is shown in table 2 and it can be seen that is likely to increase for nonwovens, as well as for woven structures, composite and others group of products.

2. Nonwovens in automotive industry:

Nonwovens are used in automotive industry for a variety of purposes due to their advantages: lightweight, sound efficiency, flexibility, versatility and easily tailored properties, moldability (easiness to conforms to irregular shapes), recyclability, low process and materials costs as well as and attractive cost/performance ratio.

According to INDA (Association of the Nonwovens Fabrics Industry) the most common technologies used to process nonwovens for automotive applications are the following (sqm): spunbonded (66%), needle punching (27%), hydro entangled/resin (6%), others (1 %).