A month before the recent 20th winter Olympics started in Turin, Italy, GE unveiled a themed monument dedicated to the residents and visitors to the city for the games.

Based in the Piazza Solferino in heart of Torino, the monument was designed by Richi Ferrero and Carmelo Giammello to resemble an ice-covered mountain with vertical rock formations and a central spire.

Named Il Dente del Gigante, or the Giant’s Tooth, in honour of the famous 4014-metre mountain peak along the border of Italy and France, the structure is eight metres high and is constructed with 550m2 of GE’s Lexan Margard thermoplastic and GE lights (Fig.1).

Lexan Margard sheet is approximately half the weight of comparative glass products, which also features GE’s hard-coating technology on both sides delivering high level protection against abrasion, cleaning fluids, paints, and adhesives and allows frequent cleaning or removal of graffiti without causing damage.

According to the company, its durability and weatherability protects against abrasives, chemicals, impact over a wide temperature range (-40°C to 120°C) – and it also comes with a 10-year limited written warranty against breakage.

As part of the exhibit, GE employees were able to send messages via the Internet during the games that were displayed on a digital messaging system at the base of the structure, which emitted coloured lights and sounds periodically.

Ferdinando Beccalli-Falco, president and ceo of GE International said: “We wanted to give our 300000 employees around the world an opportunity to participate directly in the Games and now they have a real-time way to send their best wishes directly to the centre of Torino for all to see.”

After the Games ended, the monument was moved to another location in Turin, where it will remain until February 2007.

Meanwhile Eastman Chemical Company’s DuraStar copolyester was used to manufacture seats for the Palasport Olimpico stadium in Turin The stadium was host to the ice hockey competition and can seat up to 12000 spectators.

Two types of seat are used in the stadium, one moulded as a single piece and other moulded in two pieces as a seat and adjustable backrest. Six thousand of the latter are used so that the seats can be folded when not in use.

The designer of the stadium required a material with absolute clarity and brilliance in order to represent the ice on which the hockey is played (Fig.2). The material also had to have the ability to withstand impact and fatigue caused by intensive audience use.

As well as meeting these demands, Eastman says that its copolymer also has excellent flammability ratings and chemical resistance to detergents, oils, and cosmetics as well as resistance to the influence of water on the long-term aesthetics and mechanical strength.

“By meeting the key requirements of safety, mechanical strength, stress-cracking resistance and absolute clearness, DuraStar copolyester exceeded all of our customer’s expectations,” said Andrea Caligiana, sales and market development representative for Southern Europe at Eastman. “Although it is a fairly new material for injection moulding applications, Eastman was able to provide both technical and commercial support to the customer.”

The production and installation were carried out by the Italian company La Metaltecnica srl F lli Venelli, based in Como. The company managed to complete the project in only six months. The entire process involved not only the search for the most effective material, but also product development, prototyping, moulds completion and testing, and the final production and installation of the seats.

The Eastman material was chosen after undergoing a range of material tests, passing all tests for mechanical strength as prescribed by European standards. In addition it met all flammability requirements, rated a Class1 material as established by the Italian fire regulations according to UNI9174. This property is inherent to the material, making the addition of flame-retardant agents unnecessary.

Better bobsleighs

The bobsleighs used by the Dutch Olympic team in Turin contained special DSM vibration dampers to make them more stable. This reduces the risk of steering errors and means that better times can be achieved. The vibration dampers reduce the number of vibrations in the bobsleigh runners to 40percent compared with the dampers traditionally used for bobsleighs.

An important factor in achieving the fastest time in bobsleighing is the stability of the bobsleigh on the track. This depends on the input of the bobsleighers and on the dynamic properties of the bobsleigh. The sleigh rests on runners that are cushioned by vibration dampers, which improve handling. These dampers were traditionally made from rubber, and the damping effect was therefore heavily dependent on the outside temperature: the lower the temperature, the colder and harder the rubber and the less effective the damping.

In collaboration with TNO, DSM has now developed vibration dampers that provide a constant level of damping at different temperatures. This leads to a 40percent reduction in vibrations, so that the sleigh sits more firmly on the track. In addition the bobsleighers no longer have to keep adapting the material to the outside temperature.

Ilse Broeders, one of the pilots of the Dutch bobsleigh teams, was highly satisfied with this new innovation for the bobsleigh: “We have tested the vibration dampers extensively. It’s nice to know that our impression that the DSM dampers were reducing the amount of vibration in the sleigh has now been confirmed by scientific measurements."

The innovative vibration dampers are made from the high performance material Arnitel, a thermoplastic elastomer of DSM Engineering Plastics. A major advantage of Arnitel is that its properties remain constant over a wide range of temperatures – in this case from -30 to 10°C.

On behalf of DSM, the vibration dampers were extensively tested at the end of December 2005 by TNO and the Dutch bobsleigh teams at the bobsleigh run in Altenberg, Germany. With the aid of acceleration recorders and a data recorder, two kinds of Arnitel products were compared in various variants with the standard rubber material.

The tests revealed that the Arnitel B damper with four teeth was the most effective for the twoman bobsleigh. In the case of the four-man bobsleigh, where the vibration dampers have to bear a greater weight, the Arnitel B damper without teeth achieved the best results.