Under body protective coatings (UBC) is used to guard the vehicle chassis from outdoor environment, to ensure the integrity and safety of cars. It is a thick resilient Coating under the chassis of the automobile.

A car’s underbody is unprotected to the most wear and tear affected by muddy water, stones, potholed roads and other obstacles on the road. Since it’s not in plain sight, we frequently do not see the damage.

The use of UBC plays a very vital role in the service life of the vehicle. In over-all, it is essential to spray such a protective coating in the manufacturing of the new car. Due to the highly competitiveness of new car sales, car producers have pressure to decrease the manufacturing cost, so that they reduce or even completely exclude the use of under body coating. As a consequence, car’s service life will be critically reduced.

Modern automotive coating methods consist of five main steps. They include the following:

• Pre-treatment: removes and cleans excess metal and forms an appropriate surface structure enabling bonding of a corrosion protection layer.
• The next step is electrodeposition (ED) of the anti-corrosion or rust prevention layer.
• A sealer like Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) is applied for anti-corrosion, elimination of water leaks, and minimization of chipping and vibrational noise.
• A primer is then applied to promote adhesion between the surface and the basecoat; it also imparts a smoother surface for subsequent layers and has anti-chipping properties.
• Finally, the topcoats that include a basecoat and clear coat are applied; they provide surface properties that are sought after, including colour, appearance, gloss, smoothness, and weather resistance.

For the external surfaces of an automobile to be easily visualized, the five main steps of coating and imparts a desired balance of properties.

Figure 1 Automotive coating layers

Purpose of the Under Body Coating

1. Prevent from stone chip

There are thousands pieces of stones on the road, and they are constantly hitting your car on the under body, wheel arches, sills and the trunk lower part while driving on the road. In some cases, the under body might be scratched by uneven road.

1. External Influence

External environment, such as the baking from the hot road in summer, anti-frozen gent in winter, raining water and the salty water in the atmosphere, will attach the under body of a car.

1. Keep the Value

It means that if a car is well treated on under body protection, it could keep the car in a good condition and extend the car’s service life, or you could charge a higher price in a used-car trading.

1. Improve the driving Comforts

After curing, the under body coating becomes a thick elastic coating covering the whole under body, which could act as a good dampening material, significantly reduce the vibration of the metal sheet and reduce the noise inside the car.