Are you familiar with Innegra™? It’s a new fiber on the market not yet well known among buyers and manufacturers of fiber products. But it has a wide variety of uses, from innovative aerospace materials to extreme sports equipment.
If you need a fiber that’s tough, lightweight, durable, and water-resistant, Innegra™ could be a great choice. Let’s take a closer look at the properties and benefits of this new fiber and see if it’s the right fiber for your purposes.
An Introduction to Innegra™
When Innegra™ was developed in 2008 it was designed to be the lightest commercial fiber available. It’s an olefin fiber, which means it’s a synthetic fiber made from polyolefin polypropylene.
Depending on the use, Innegra™ can either be used alone or combined with other fibers. Innegra™ S is the primary yarn and Innegra™ H is a series of yarns that are combined with high-modulus materials like aramid, basalt, carbon, or glass. A high modulus means it’s highly resistant to elasticity, retaining its shape and not deforming under pressure.
When combined with other fibers, it’s known as a hybridized yarn, thus the “H” in Innegra™ H. Innegra’s flexibility in hybridization has quickly created a high demand in a diverse range of industries.
Key Physical Properties
Innegra™ is extremely light weight, 0.84g/cc, which means it can reduce the overall weight in a multitude of applications. While its light weight wouldn’t be immediately obvious in something small, like a short rope, it’s quite noticeable when you haul something larger, like a piece of sports equipment.
This fiber is can also provide incredible damage resistance. Innegra™ can tolerate a large amount of rubbing, pulling, twisting, and stress without warping or breaking. When combined with other materials with higher modulus, Innegra™ works as a safety mechanism to protect the other fibers from catastrophic failure.
It’s also impact resistant, which is why it has caught the attention of industries that require high impact resistance, like aerospace, automotive, and ballistics. A strong or sudden impact should bounce right off of a product made with this fiber.
Innegra™ is hydrophobic and hydrolytically stable, meaning it resists water and chemicals. Its moisture resistance is an added benefit when used in marine sports technology for the development of innovative new athletic and adventure products.
There are also vibration-damping properties that make Innegra™ a good choice for certain applications. Vibration damping contributes to manufacturing safety, product design, noise reduction, reduced machine wear, and protecting the health of production facility workers.
Innegra™ disperses energy, preventing an energy load from building and causing a hazard. It significantly reduces the incidence of catastrophic failures in product manufacturing and use.
Benefits of Innegra™
Reducing the overall weight of products is one of the primary benefits of Innegra™. A lighter weight is easier to handle at the manufacturing facility, more attractive to buyers, and beneficial for end users.
Innegra™ has a high strength to weight ratio, which means products retain strength even in a very large item. For this reason design innovators are currently looking at new applications of Innegra™ in many fields.
Good damage tolerance means extended part life of things made from Innegra™. This saves money and time. It also indicates that finished goods will have lower lifetime maintenance needs.
Its high impact resistance means it has a wide variety of uses. Our world is full of opportunities for sudden damage. Manufacturers and end users tend to prefer impact-resistant goods.
The water and chemical resistance of Innegra™ helps you meet strict manufacturing specifications. This includes items produced for marine, air, space, and industrial use that must have specific hydrologic and hydrolytic properties.
Which Industries Use Innegra™?
Innegra’s™ light weight has made it popular in sports that favor ultralight equipment, like windsurfing, parachuting, skiing, and kayaking. In fact, professional kayaker Dane Jackson won a gold medal at the Freestyle Kayak World Championship using a kayak made with Innegra™ H.
For the same reasons, this fiber is attractive to the motorsports and racing industry. It is being used in F1 racing, NASCAR and Indy cars as well as helmets and is contributing to the success of teams like the Brawn GP Formula One Team, which has won numerous Grand Prix victories with the help of Innegra™.
Outside of motorsports, Innegra™ is also being used in other sports that require equipment to be impact-resistant and durable, like tennis, surfing, hockey, bicycling, and equestrian sports. For example, when Andy Murray won Wimbledon with a Head YouTek IG Radical Pro racquet made with Innegra™, sports reporters wrote about the fiber’s effect on pro tennis.
In the field of law enforcement, Innegra™ is being used in police shields, helmets, and ballistics protective gear. Although it should not be used to replace carbon or glass, it can be combined with these materials to make extremely tough items like windscreens and bomb resistant equipment.
Because Innegra™ S is the lightest fiber on the market, it’s ideal for lightweight nautical ropes, cables, and webbing. In typical marine situations - like commercial fishing - it’s buoyant to neutral-buoyant, which means that its average density is equal to or less than the density of the fluid in which it is immersed.
Innegra™ is also bringing revolutionary advancements to marine technology. We’ve already seen that it can turn a whitewater rafting paddle into a near-indestructible adventure tool. What if ships could be built with Innegra™ resisting rocks, icebergs, and collisions at sea?
If you opt for Innegra™, you’ll also need to decide between Innegra™ S - the pure form - and Innegra™ H - the hybrid blend. But here’s the good news: Service Thread is available to help answer your fiber selection questions. Our technical experts understand the product specs and recommendations for fibers like Innegra™.
Choosing Innegra™ for Your Purpose
Innegra™ is the right choice for a wide variety of uses, but not everything. For example, its buoyancy means it’s not ideal for ropes or netting that need to sink. Its water resistance makes it a poor choice for materials that should absorb moisture, like commercial cleaning fabrics and oil spill cleanup materials.
If you opt for Innegra™, you’ll also need to decide between Innegra™ S - the pure form - and Innegra™ H - the hybrid blend. But here’s the good news: Service Thread is available to help answer your fiber selection questions. Our technical experts understand the product specs and recommendations for fibers like Innegra™.
We’re here as a resource for you. To learn more about Innegra™ and how it can be used in your companies application, connect with Service Thread.
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