Mission Statement

The need to conserve raw materials and energy renders the resource efficiency of manufacturing processes and products a central competitive factor for Germany as a production site and for the protection of jobs within the manufacturing sector. The vision of the Cluster of Excellence is to tap into the joint resource potential of merged technologies and lightweight structures by adopting an integrated approach. Thus, the Chemnitz Cluster MERGE is pursuing a long-term strategy of bivalent resource efficiency (BRE strategy).

By merging the individual material-specific manufacturing processes to technologies suitable for the mass-production of lightweight structures, considerable savings of energy and material can be attained.

The hybrid construction of multifunctional lightweight structures unites passive or active components, which must be combined to meet specific requirements. Within the framework of this Cluster of Excellence, the fundamental groups of metals, plastics and textile reinforcements are provided for the passive structural components. Their fundamental production methods are characterised by

• suitability for mass-production, reproducibility, flexibility,
• economic significance in all application areas,
• a broad spectrum of basic processes and principles,
• predestination for hybrid lightweight structures.

In addition active components such as sensors, actuators and generators in electronic modules can be integrated into the production process using in-line or in-situ procedures, thus adding a further stage of functional lightweight construction. An even higher added-value rate will be generated by integrating mechanical (passive) as well as functional (active) systems into load-bearing structures. Added benefits of the functional hybridisation of fundamental textile-, plastics- and metal-processing technologies, and of the resulting lightweight structures, will arise from the new technological platform when mechanisms with similar manufacturing physics are fully exploited. Therefore, the national and international industrial cooperation partners of the Cluster provide practice-relevant process scenarios and product requirements.

At the Chemnitz University of Technology (CUT), its affiliated institutes and the Fraunhofer Institutes, fundamental technologies based on textile-, plastics- and metal-processing methods, as well as microsystems integration, including smart sensors, actuators and electronics, have been developed at an early stage. Concentrating all of these manufacturing methods at a single research location, the Technology Campus, facilitates the knowledge transfer necessary for a process merger. This is a major advantage of the Chemnitz location. The local concentration has already led to interdisciplinary cooperation, however, only in insular fields of the technology fusion. In these fields also a close collaboration with scientists of the Dresden University of Technology (DUT) is given. Based on the specialist expertise of the participating institutions in the above-mentioned fundamental technologies, first plans have been developed for an energy efficient merger of technologies for lightweight structures, with a high rate of added value, in alignment with the BRE strategy.

Resource efficiency, the superordinate aim of the Cluster of Excellence, focuses on the reduction of energy and materials used in production and in lightweight structures. The concentration of research expertise is intended to reduce the resource and cost expenditures while improving climate protection due to reduced CO2-emission, all within the five-year funding period. In view of increasing shortages of resources, the long-term vision is to direct the development of merged technologies towards ever-greater sustainability. Strategies for the use of renewable and almost inexhaustible raw materials, as well as for the improvement of upcycling processes, are to be investigated.

The MERGE Cluster of Excellence will contribute significantly to the strengthening and concentration of competencies through the exploitation of the joint saving potential of technology merging and of lightweight structures, which will considerably sharpen the competitive profile of Chemnitz as scientific location.