Research Projects
Automated greenhouse gas balancing for SMEs - Auto THG-Bilanz
As part of the Green Deal, the EU is calling on its members to become climate-neutral by 2050. A key instrument for achieving this goal is the recording of the greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of large companies (>1000 employees). Consequently, this complex accounting is not mandatory for SMEs, but is indirectly passed on to them through the Supply Chain Sustainability Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz). The aim of the project is to automate GHG accounting in order to reduce the economic and personnel burden on SMEs in the metalworking industry. The desired project result is an innovative technology that is capable of automatically calculating product and company-specific GHG balances. Initially, the technology will be used for 3D metal printing (3DMD), turning and milling. This selection of manufacturing processes will initially cover around 50% of all metal processing. The possibility of extending the application to other manufacturing processes is given by the modularity of the technology. The technology is transferred as a demonstrator to a software tool developed in-house. The software tool creates a valid production plan from the CAD model of a component and calculates the associated planning data. The corresponding GHG value is calculated for each production step. This can relieve the burden on companies that lack the resources or expertise for GHG balancing.
Contact person: Sebastian Langula
Experimental and numerical analysis of forming-induced residual stresses to specifically increase the fatigue strength of highly cyclically loaded high-purity copper components
Component failure due to cyclic loading plays a decisive role in almost all industrial applications. In order to avoid failures, the behavior under cyclic loads must be taken into account in the dimensioning process. Based on the methodological findings of a DFG project, which was jointly carried out by the applicants as part of the DFG-SPP 2013, a systematic investigation of forming components made of high-purity copper sheet is to be carried out in cooperation with ZF Friedrichshafen AG (ZF). Busbars produced by bending processes will be used as an example. The effects of the forming process on the residual stress state as well as the local material properties and the resulting fatigue strength of the component form the core of the project. The focus is on the adjustment of the residual stress state in a targeted manner to improve the fatigue strength.
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
Forming and welding technology for energy-efficient and resource-saving production of metallic bipolar plates - UmKE
The success of the CO2-neutral hydrogen economy depends largely on the manufacturing capacities and costs of fuel cells and electrolyzers. Metallic bipolar plates (BPP) account for 70-80% of the manufacturing costs of a fuel cell stack. In addition to the material costs (approx. 55 %), the production costs, together with the tool manufacturing costs, are a significant factor. The aim of this project is to develop robust, high-rate, automatable and scalable production technologies for metallic BPPs. The research focuses on shaping, joining and process modeling. The forming of the thin films represents a major challenge, which is increased by additional requirements from the design for joining. The forming process is to be realized reliably through vibration-superimposed embossing. Welding the 50 μm thin half-shells is just as challenging and should be carried out within a few milliseconds using robust capacitor discharge welding. As only spot-shaped electrically conductive welded joints can be produced in this way, direct thermal joining for sealing the BPP is being researched in another sub-project. Compared to laser welding, which has been used up to now, there are economic (significantly reduced production times with much lower system costs) and technical advantages (less heat input and therefore less distortion and less surface degradation).
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
Process technology and device for automating the preparation of joints in plastic casing pipes (KMR) for the efficient expansion of district heating networks - KMR-VerA
District heating networks make a significant contribution to the efficient use of energy resources and are to be expanded at an accelerated rate. The approx. 350 companies that expand and maintain the district heating network in Germany cannot even begin to cover the demand. The annual growth rates of 9% and more can only be achieved by increasing productivity while maintaining or improving quality in order to reduce maintenance requirements in the long term. The most important components in network expansion are the plastic casing pipes (KMR), which have to be prepared for joining on the construction site with a great deal of manual effort. With (partially) automated joint preparation, we want to cut the current preparation time in half. This increases productivity to the same extent and allows savings of up to €3 million per year in the total construction volume for Germany. With our device for (partially) automated joint preparation of plastic casing pipes, we aim to achieve annual savings potential of at least €5,000 per company. The aim of this project is the necessary process and product development.
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
SPP2476 - Method development for the multi-criteria optimization of a process chain for the production of hybrid lightweight components
The subject of the project is a four-stage process chain for manufacturing a lightweight helmet from an Al/Mg/Al sandwich structure. The properties that can be adjusted within technologically relevant limits and are relevant in the course of a backward-oriented design are the component weight, stiffness, dimensional accuracy and the resulting CO2 footprint. Due to the large number of parameters that can be directly influenced along the process chain to adjust the four evaluation criteria mentioned and the mutual parameter interactions, the process chain "roll cladding - blank cutting - deep drawing - laser cutting" is ideally suited for backward-oriented design and overall process chain optimization.
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
Sustainable Electric Architecture Casings: EAC+
The aim of the EAC+ project is to develop recyclable, sustainable, economically and technically competitive housing structures that have a high potential for use in a wide range of industries and at the same time meet the high electromagnetic requirements of electromobility. This will be demonstrated on one of the most technologically demanding components of electric vehicles, the housing of the traction inverter. In the long term, it is planned to transfer the technology to the housings of DC/DC converters, chargers, battery housings, etc. A new type of hybrid injection molding is being developed with the EAC+ project partners. The EAC+ technology makes it possible to replace conventional aluminum housings with economically attractive and at the same time sustainable components with an intelligent mix of materials.
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
2nd Life Life Metal Component - Upcycling by Remanufacturing
While topics relating to energy as a resource have recently attracted a great deal of attention, materials as a resource often go unnoticed, even though both types of resources are essential for sustainable production technology. Industrialized nations in particular have a very high demand for materials - especially metals - which cannot be met by the energy-intensive production of new materials alone or with existing recovery strategies such as recycling. In future, goods in use must therefore be used directly as raw materials. The energy-intensive recycling step of returning the material to a melt will no longer be necessary and will be replaced by direct reuse of the material. However, production technology is currently not equipped for this new type of raw material extraction, meaning that there are no adequate process routes or chains that enable these resources to be processed. This is where the research project comes in, in order to develop a practicable process route for the largest proportion of metallic components - the sheet metal components - in which the areas of laser processing, material characterization, forming and planning interact in a complementary manner. As a result, it should be possible to sustainably manufacture a new component with a proportion of 75% from materials that have already been used at least once without a classic recycling step:
¾ previously used component + ¼ new semi-finished product ⇨2nd Life Metal Component
Contact person: Christina Guilleaume
Automated removal of 3D metal printing supports by milling - AutoSupport
The EU-funded project is a cooperation project with H+E Produktentwicklung GmbH. The aim of this project is the joint development of an innovative technology for the automated removal of support in 3D metal printing components by 5-axis milling to increase the automation of production capacity while reducing production costs. The project aims to use the latest research findings to solve a previously insurmountable problem of great economic importance.
Contact person: Sebastian Langula
Transregio TRR285 - Development of methods for mechanical joinability in versatile process chains
With the research of scientific methods in the field of joining technology, which lead to the establishment of efficient and resource-saving process chains with product diversity, different materials and construction methods, the CRC/Transregio is addressing an exciting and current topic. In view of the volatile demands of industry and consumers as well as accelerating development cycles in the globalized world, adaptability is one of the central topics of modern production technology
Further information can be found on the TRR285 website
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
Thermomechanical ring rolling with predictive property control
Thermomechanical tangential profile ring rolling (TMR) is a process for producing near-net-shape ring geometries while simultaneously influencing the microstructure and hardness in a targeted manner through controlled process management with regard to forming and temperature. For this purpose, a combined approach of PID and predictive models is used, which makes it possible to utilize the existing process window in such a way that the target values for final geometry, microstructure and hardness can be achieved simultaneously. After validation on the real machine, it will be possible to transfer the control strategy for geometries and configurations to cases that cannot be realized on the existing rolling mill. An analysis of the process and system performance should enable the derivation of design principles and rules regarding the system architecture (actuators, sensors, modeling and control) for the implementation of thermomechanically controlled ring rolling.
Further information can be found on the SPP2183 websiteSPP2183 website
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
Complementary database generation for machine learning for quality prediction using the example of ring rolling
In order to use machine learning for manufacturing processes such as radial-axial ring rolling, data sets of good and reject parts must be recorded. This requires balanced data sets with regard to the ratio of good to reject parts. However, this is not the case with industrial data, which is why the method of data augmentation through synthetic data via simulation is used within the project. Within the field of radial-axial ring rolling, there is no fast, analytical simulation that can be used to generate a sufficiently large number of synthetically produced data sets with "rollings with form or process errors". For this reason, the research question of the extent to which a similar process can be investigated for the transfer to radial-axial ring rolling is being pursued.
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
Development of a process for forming aluminum sheet materials at cryogenic temperatures
Lightweight materials such as aluminum alloys play an important role in weight reduction. However, their limited formability at room temperature poses a major challenge and restricts their use. Significant improvements in formability can be achieved, for example, through recovery annealing or hot forming with several process steps. However, this improvement in formability comes at the expense of various positive properties such as strength, component quality or costs. To avoid this, aluminum sheets can be formed at cryogenic temperatures, whereby the limit for adjusting the positive properties should be the subject of the research applied for here. The project deals with the combination of cryogenic sheet metal forming with the macro-structuring of the die and blank holder during deep drawing. A special, wave-like geometry of the forming tools minimizes the contact surface between the sheet metal and the tool in order to suppress the heat flow and thus the heating of the sheet metal. In addition, the local limit temperature of the sheet metal must be determined, above which the advantages of the cryogenic material properties of aluminum alloys come into play.
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
Resilient deep drawing through macrostructured tools
The approach of using macrostructuring in the flange area to stabilize the deep drawing process and to increase robustness against changing input variables is useful in all sheet metal processing industries and in the associated toolmaking. The central aim is to make the results achieved in the basic research area fully available to industrial users. The methodology provided has an extremely high potential for implementation in the challenging industrial environment, as it addresses two of the main problems faced by companies. On the one hand, the robustness of deep drawing processes is highly relevant because it improves the degree of utilization of materials, minimizes the production of scrap and prevents damage to cost-intensive tools. On the other hand, with high cost pressure and ever shorter time periods between evolutions and new product developments, it is critical to transfer these quickly and reliably into safe processes.
Contact person: Christian Steinfelder
Automated production costing - AFK
The aim of the R&D cooperation project is to develop a technology for automated production costing in order to drastically reduce the effort involved in calculating planned times and production costs, which is always necessary in machining production. The aim is to achieve fully automated production costing. The technology should enable economical, reliable and highly efficient planning of machining production. The approach dispenses with the conventional manual methods of production costing and determines production costs directly and fully automatically from the CAD data already available for the components. The planned R&D project digitizes existing production engineering knowledge and applies it automatically to the existing data basis (CAD data). The solution offered enables companies without their own production costing department to draw on production engineering know-how.
Contact person: Sebastian Langula
Development of an automated design-accompanying manufacturability analysis based on CAD data - manufacturability analysis
The aim of the project is to develop a process for the automated and design-accompanying provision of information for the designer, which enables him to reduce the costs of machining the component he has designed during the design process. The designer has a special role to play in the product development process (PDP), as around 85% of all subsequent costs are determined during the design phase. Early detection of a design that is not suitable for production reduces the costs for the entire product sustainably and with little effort.
Contact person: Sebastian Langula