GRP in Bus Roofs


Fibre Reinforced Bus Roofs


Reading time: ca. 3:30 min.

Advantages of GRP in Bus Roofs

What materials do you currently use for the cladding of your buses? Steel or aluminium? These are excellent materials, but they have some disadvantages compared to construction materials made of fibre-reinforced plastic (GRP).

Water Leakage

Water splashes on bus windscreen | insights by LAMILUX

Water entering your bus will cause many problems: Corrosion or bacteria in insulation or short circuits in electrical cabling - but also wet seats and passengers. The bus becomes unusable, you will lose passengers and incur high costs and great effort for repair work. This does not have to be the case when it is clear where the water ingress comes from: Corrosion, rivets and joints between the cladding sheets are the weak points. This never occurs with LAMILUX glassfibre-reinforced plastic sheets. GRP therefore eliminates rivets because you adhere the material over a large area. It also eliminates joints as you only process one large sheet instead of many smaller ones. The composite material is additionally resistant to corrosion even in the harshest weather conditions.

How can GRP be further processed?

Glass-fibre reinforced plastics (GRP) offer enormous construction possibilities in the areas of vehicle, motorhome and caravan construction, cold storage and refrigerated cell construction, the construction industry and numerous other industrial segments. As highly stable, durable and at the same time very light materials, our materials can also be worked and processed in a variety of ways, for example by:

  • Cutting
  • Sawing
  • Drilling
  • Bonding

Vehicle Weight

How often do you get annoyed about the increasing fuel and maintenance costs of your vehicles? We can reassure you: With the optimal cladding, for example a fibre reinforced bus roof, you can achieve improved fuel efficiency as well as a longer service life for your bodywork, tyres and vehicle parts.

When you have designed your buses for a service life of 800,000 kilometres, then when does the profit zone start? With GRP under 100,000 kilometres.

The Solution

LAMILUX Composites High Strength X-treme | insights by LAMILUX

Due to the reduced dead weight of the plastic sheets, your bus cladding becomes a pure lightweight construction. As a result, you consume less fuel, the tyres wear down less, the bodywork is under less load and strain and you can achieve the Euro 6 standard more easily because your bus is more environmentally friendly when you are on the move.

Vehicle Production

GRP can simplify the production process for the roof cladding and wall cladding of your buses. The fibre-reinforced plastic creates many advantages, for example reducing welding and riveting several strips to form one surface. Instead of this method: An easy-to-apply adhering process.

Compared to steel or aluminium, the plastic sheets also ensure increased work safety and material efficiency: They do not have any sharp edges on which your staff can cut themselves and do not form any deformations during processing. Furthermore, you can order the material from LAMILUX in rolls which are precisely adapted to your production needs in terms of length and width. Producing a bus roof in this manner enables you to save 50 percent of the production time, as well as workers and professional welders.

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In this video you can see how to bond a bus roof with LAMILUX Composites. Our Indian colleague Rohan Bellikati demonstrates this at a trade fair.

Life-cycle Duration

Man with steam jet washes bus side wall | insights by LAMILUX

Buses equipped with fibre-reinforced plastic roofs have a significantly longer service life than buses fitted with steel roofs. Why is that? On the one hand, GRP is easier and better to repair than steel and it is also actually easier to clean. This also reduces maintenance costs. Furthermore, there is no chance of corrosion or rust. The material is also resistant to hail stones without major damage.

What else GRP can achieve

In fact, this is not everything that these composites have to offer. More benefits of GRP in bus roofs:

  • Long-lasting beautiful appearance
  • Easy to paint
  • Weather resistance e.g. against UV radiation and hail
  • Wide colour selection
  • Improved interior acoustics
  • Low thermal conductivity e.g. to increase the efficiency of the air-conditioning system
  • Tried and tested globally utilized product range
  • TÜV certified quality
  • Arai Fire Certificate