Industry Interview: Lord Corporation
GCT 2011 Volume: 2 Issue: 6 (November/December)
James Yakel
Manager of Business Development
Lord Corporation
James Yakel is the manager of business development, military ground vehicles market, for Lord Corp. With more than 35 years of experience, Yakel has worked with the design, development, manufacturing and testing of high-quality, sophisticated military and heavy commercial vehicles.
Q: Can you describe Lord Corporation’s history and evolution?
A: Founded in 1924 by Hugh Lord, Lord has a long history of innovation. By leveraging our core competencies of surface [interfacial, adhesion] science, polymer science and engineering, material science, mechanical design, dynamic system design and analysis as well as electromechanical systems, we have developed a wide array of proprietary technologies. These include elastomeric and fluid vibration isolation and damping; active vibration control systems; magneto-rheological [MR] fluids, devices and systems; realtime balancing of rotating equipment; elastomer bonding and coating; structural bonding; electronic materials; as well as high-performance and heat-reflective coatings.
Approximately 10 percent of our annual revenues are invested in R&D efforts. To date, we have received 2,464 patents companywide on a global basis, 555 of which are currently active.
Q: Could you provide some background on the company and its product line, focusing on the needs of the military?
A: Lord has a long history of serving the military, especially in the aerospace market. Today, we continue to serve as an integral supplier as a prime and subcontractor to the DoD for motion, vibration and noise control products for the rotary and fixed wing markets. This experience includes a fair amount of passive isolation dampers and mounts that were designed specifically for our military. Today, in addition to our aerospace products, one of the technologies Lord is adapting to serve the U.S. military is our MR fluid technology.
Q: What is MR fluid?
A: Lord MR is more than just fluid. The technology is based on commercial proprietary and patented fluid, damper, mount, brake and clutch designs as well as sophisticated computer control algorithms. When exposed to a magnetic field, MR materials change state nearly instantaneously and with complete reversibility. As a result, MR technology provides fast and infinitely variable control of energy dissipation for industrial and automotive devices. As the only provider of commercial MR fluids, We are the largest manufacturer of MR devices and systems globally.
To date, our MR fluid has been integrated into more than 650,000 devices on more than a dozen models from multiple automotive OEMs as part of the MagneRide suspension system developed by BWI Group. Another application of our MR fluid technology is in seat dampers as requirements limiting the level of whole body vibration exposure for construction, agricultural and related machines are growing because long-term exposure can cause nerve damage, fatigue and overall stress.
Q: How are you positioned for the future within the military?
A: With respect to our primary suspension line, we are positioned with maturing product offerings in the light ground vehicle class through the mine resistant ambush protected vehicle class. Lord has invested in developing a simple retrofit that can be field applied, offering substantial improvements in mobility and ride quality.
In addition to improvements in damping, the system provides electronic stability control, improving safety by sensing the roll, pitch and yaw of the vehicle and making real-time adjustments to the damping force, greatly improving vehicle stability. This method of stability control is most effective under cross-country terrain as typically encountered by tactical military vehicles.
Building on our long history of serving the U.S. military, and in order to ensure that volume production rates can be met, Lord established a production center for the MR primary ground vehicle suspension product line in Cambridge Springs, Pa. This plant is capable of meeting high volume production rates.
Lord invested more than $1 million in the MR suspension production cell for assembly and fill of the MR dampers, providing a flexible high-volume capability to meet expected customer demand.
Q: What is today’s military customer asking for?
A: The key themes are cost-effective, easily maintained systems that address concerns of mobility and armor protection, while maintaining payload in tactical vehicles.
Q: What is an example of your success in the military?
A: We recently completed 10,000 hours of durability testing of our MR suspension system for military vehicles. Under third-party testing at the Nevada Automotive Testing Center, the test vehicle, an M1078 light medium tactical vehicle, surpassed 10,000 miles of durability miles without a single fault noted.
This third-party durability testing success follows lab tests conducted by Lord, in which MR dampers for the HMMWV and other military vehicles reached 5 million cycles of durability testing, far exceeding the U.S. government’s requirements for passive dampers. This testing validates a high level of performance, better than that of the existing, passive dampers in use.
Other non-confidential vehicle programs include Stryker, which successfully demonstrated combined 4,000 miles of performance and durability testing earlier in the year at Aberdeen Testing Center (ATC) and Yuma Testing Center, as well as a HMMWV, which will enter into performance and durability testing at ATC later in the year. ♦