The present invention generally relates to materials for use in shielding from heat and/or flame, and in particular, heat and/or flame shielding material that can be used in applications such as hood liners for automobiles, engine compartment liners, bedding construction, upholstery, wall padding, and the like.
Numerous industries require materials which not only deliver heat and flame resistant properties, but can also provide volume, opacity, moldability, and other properties in a cost effective single substrate. Often times these barrier properties are best accomplished by using specialty materials which generate a high level of performance, but also introduce significant cost to the substrate. Especially in a voluminous substrate (high z direction thickness) even the introduction of a small percent of these materials into the shield material can introduce a significant level of cost to the overall substrate. For this reason composites having specialty surface layers are often used to provide these barrier properties. An example of a composite having specialty surface layers would be a skin laminated to a voluminous lower cost material. While this method effectively reduces the cost of the high cost raw material, there are disadvantages to this method such as additional processing steps and the potential delamination of the skin layer.
The present invention provides an alternative to the prior art by using a unitary heat shield material with different zones to provide the various desired properties of the material