Purpose of orange caulk-like material around edge of battery shield?

[silenteski]

I bottomed out the passenger side of my vehicle while entering a badly designed parking lot. The scraped/cracked plastic panel that runs along the side under the doors is an easy enough fix (top of this photo), as is the scraped bare metal that was exposed (middle left of this photo).

What I'm not sure about is this orange caulk-like material that runs along the entire edge of the main shield under the battery. While looking over the damage, I noticed one section of the "caulk" looks like it might be damaged:

There's no leak, and I don't know if this was actually caused by my incident, but I figured I would ask around anyway. Does anybody know the purpose of this orange material (eg. is it a water-tight seal)? Trying to determine if this gouge is something I ought to fix while I'm down there.

 

[KenC]

The stuff that squeezes out, shouldn't be essential to the safe operation of your car. That's the excess. I can only assume it's orange, because heat safe barrier stuff is often orange. If you buy thermal block foam at the store, it's orange.

 

[Dolemite]

Yeah I wouldn't worry about it.