JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #129 - July/August 2019 - 24

MANUFACTURlNG initiative

Spotlights from the world of lightweighting

Werner Loscheider,
Head of Division for Construction, Resource
Efficiency and Lightweighting
German Ministry for Economic
Affairs and Energy

for e-mobility). The objective was to develop
efficient lightweighting solutions for high-volume applications. Two demonstrators were
developed and manufactured:

In 2020, these activities will be supplemented
by a technology transfer programme for lightweighting. The funding programme promotes
cross-branch and cross-material knowledge and
technology transfer considering a broad lifecycle assessment. It is a logical continuation of the
already successfully established Lightweighting
Initiative of the Federal Ministry of Economic
Affairs and aims to bring lightweighting into a
broad range of industrial applications. Some
spotlights are compiled below.

pull-out properties during crack propagation.
Large and thin-walled components can be
produced via winding technology, weaving or
laminating of fibre structures. CMC materials
are predestined for applications in aircraft
engines or energy-producing gas turbines due
to the combination of shape diversity and damage tolerance with low density and excellent
high-temperature stability.
The Fraunhofer IKTS works on both the
matrix composition and interface design of
CMC materials, and on special manufacturing processes. Curved CMCs are especially
exceptional and, as planar components, they
distinguish themselves by their bending
strengths of up to 500 MPa, good damage
tolerance at a fracture strain of >0.4% and a
high temperature resistance of up to 1200°C.
However, CMCs show corrosion- and abrasion-related damage, especially in long-term
applications. Therefore, Fraunhofer IKTS is
developing and testing coating materials that
increase the corrosion stability tolerance against
sand and fly ash. With the aid of a test plant
unique in Europe, realistic corrosion conditions
occurring in turbines are created. Thus, an
EBC material with self-healing properties was
developed for environments where the smallest
particles oxidize in a corrosion-resistant matrix
when exposed to oxygen in the combustion gas
atmosphere and expand. This reduces oxygen
diffusion in the coating material, thus closing
the cracks.

High-temperature
ceramic lightweight solutions
The fibres in Ceramic Matrix Composites
(CMC) allow for a quasi-ductile or damage-tolerant behaviour based on specific fibre

Multi-material lightweight
design for e-mobility
Fraunhofer ICT participated in the publicly-funded research project SmiLE (Systemintegrated multi-material lightweight design

Both components were designed with innovative simulation tools and the manufacturing
processes were developed according to the
requirement for 300-part-per-day production
at a predefined cost.

he Lightweighting Initiative includes a
coordination office, an advisory council
for lightweighting materials, a strategy
group for lightweighting organizations in the
German federal states as well as a Lightweighting
round table and an interactive online tool,
Leichtbauatlas (www.leichtbauatlas.de). The
Initiative is represented at the Hanover Fair
and will host the first Lightweighting Summit
in April 2019. The lightweighting activities
among the stakeholders in Germany are
coordinated by the coordination office. As a
national and international network hub, the office supports German companies, in particular
SMEs, in further developing lightweighting as
a key technology and supports cross-industry
technology transfer.

The German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy successfully
launched a Lightweighting Initiative, which clearly presents lightweight-relevant competences in Germany. Within the Ministry,
Werner Loscheider, Head of the Division for Construction, Resource
Efficiency and Lightweighting, is responsible for the Lightweighting
Initiative.

jec composites magazine / N°129 July - August 2019

-- A rear underbody component made with a
novel compression moulding process, the
so-called "local advanced tailored LFT-D
process". Here, continuous reinforcements
made from thermoplastic tapes are locally
overmoulded with long-fibre thermoplastics in a compression moulding process. In
combination with aluminium profiles and
integrated load application elements also
joined in the compression moulding process, this hybrid component demonstrates
the feasibility of a high-volume-capable
thermoplastic multi-material manufacturing process.
-- A front underbody component manufactured as a continuous carbon fibre-reinforced part using a newly developed
pressure-controlled RTM process that was
integrated into a process chain. The integrated, pressure-sensitive sandwich cores
require a precisely controlled, predefined
maximum in-mould pressure achieved
with a variable mould gap during injection
and compression. Due to the exponential
increase of the preform permeability with
larger mould gaps, a high flow rate can be
used to achieve a short cycle time.

http://www.leichtbauatlas.de

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #129 - July/August 2019

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