Research fields

One of the Chair of Mechanics of Materials and Failure Analysis’s main research areas is the investigation of damage mechanisms resulting from cyclic mechanical stress. Material fatigue is a phenomena that still continues to cause repeated early component and structure failure to this day and often gives rise to catastrophic damage. In a wide range of applications, from drive components used in the automotive industry and... (wind power, medical implants, turbines etc.), adequate vibration resistance is crucial for failure prevention.

In this respect, the Chair’s research is aimed both at characterising fundamental phenomena, such as extremely slow crack propagation under threshold-level stress and the interactions between the crack front and micro-structural property variables, as well as at investigating the influence of different production processes on vibration resistance. The Chair’s research in the area of material fatigue has been extended to include the area of fibre-reinforced plastics and their application in aviation and is currently being driven forward as part of a collaborative project funded by ERA-Net.

The mechanical tests generally either focus on determining a material’s key characteristics or at obtaining microscopic images of stress scenarios under realistic conditions using laboratory technology in order to predict a component or system’s reliability.

In addition to the purely bilateral industry collaborations (which are performed in particular in connection with the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology’s Department of Materials Characterisation and Testing), the Chair Holder and her team also have extensive experience in conducting German Research Foundation-funded basic research through the Foundation’s Standard Procedure Programme, its Priority Programmes (SPP) and Collaborative Research Centres (SFB) Programmes, as well with the funding of the German Federation of Industrial Research Associations (AiF), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).