TU Dresden hands over innovative commercial vehicle model with textile-reinforced plastic body to Dresden's Transport Museum

What is a “function-integrated vehicle system carrier?” It is a technology demonstrator for a commercial vehicle with a modern design for urban, municipal, or in-house transport, built using an innovative textile-thermoplastic construction method. This vehicle system carrier with the German abbreviation FiF is characterized by a high degree of strength and rigidity combined with low weight, and it can also be recycled.

It was created as a result of the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 639 “Textile-reinforced Composite Components for Function-integrating Multi-material Design in Complex Lightweight Applications,” which was based at TU Dresden from 2004 to 2015 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The resulting findings and developed technologies from twelve years of research were incorporated into the generic demonstrator FiF, which was presented to the global public for the first time at the Hannover Messe 2016.

The Institute of Lightweight Engineering and Polymer Technology (ILK), a research facility of the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the Friedrich List Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences at TUD Dresden University of Technology, has now handed over the demonstrator to Dresden's Transport Museum in the presence of TUD Chancellor Jan Gerken. Maria Niklaus, Head of the Road Transport Collection, is delighted with the addition to the collection: "With the transfer of an experimental model such as the FiF to the Verkehrsmuseum's Road Transport Collection, we have succeeded in obtaining a vehicle that we can use to show our visitors aspects of contemporary automotive research such as autonomous driving, new materials and sustainable production."

Dresden's Transport Museum Verkehrsmuseum was founded in 1952 as a museum of the Dresden University of Transport (HfV). Until it was separated from the university in 1958, the Transport Museum was a kind of laboratory for economic and transport history at the university. The links between the museum and the university have never been severed and have recently been intensified. For instance, the university's research projects on urban development, traffic planning and traffic management were incorporated into the special exhibition "MOVE! Traffic makes the city" (2023). “We are very interested in expanding our good contact with the related faculties and institutes at TU Dresden,” says Dr. Michael Vogt, Director of Dresden's Transport Museum. The collaboration, which also manifests itself in the donation of the FiF, is mutually beneficial."

The next opportunities to view the FiF will be during the guided tours of the Verkehrsmuseum's depot (Zwickauer Straße 96, Dresden) on Open Monument Day on September 14 and at the end of the railroad season in mid-October, when the depot will also be open.

Background: Function-integrated lightweight design
By using the textile-thermoplastic technologies developed in the CRC 639, the FiF demonstrator vehicle could be designed as a lightweight structure with a high degree of integrated functions. A highly integrative vehicle structure consisting of just two load-bearing systems - the vehicle cabin and the support structure, to which the chassis and drive are connected - ensures a high percentage of lightweight engineering while minimizing production complexity. The number of components for the entire load-bearing vehicle structure has been reduced to six highly integrated components. Moreover, the CRC scientists are using the FiF to demonstrate the integration of a large number of structural, electrical and adaptive functions. The entire vehicle is interwoven with a material-embedded sensor network that handles data communication in the demonstrator. It receives and processes information such as on the local material condition, and forwards it to user interfaces.

Contact:
Verkehrsmuseum Dresden
Manuel Halbauer
Head of Public Relations/Marketing
+49 351 8644131

Institute of Lightweight Engineering and Polymer Technology (ILK), TU Dresden
Diana Wolfrum
Communication
Tel: +49 351 463-39471
Email: