The research world continues to grow together internationally, with English being the common lingua franca. In order to further improve the quality of the English scientific publications at conferences and in journals, the professorship Machine Elements and Product Development is now supported by Dana Ebermann from Prof. English Language & Linguistics.

Dr. Flavio Campanile joined the team of the Professorship Machine Elements and Product Development on July 1. Mr. Campanile has already worked in numerous stations of the scientific and research community – for example at the German Aerospace Center and at the ETH Zurich. With his expertise in the field of compliant mechanisms, Mr. Campanile will give important input to the research group at the Institute.

 

The expansion of the experimental field is progressing. The testing possibilities of the research group shaft-hub-connection are extended with a rotating bending test bench. It is made possible to determine the material fatigue strength, which is necessary for the proof of strength. So far these quantities have often been determined by converting values from static tests using standard characteristic values. The appliation-oriented testing enables to utilize the performance reserves for real operating conditions.

After many years of active cooperation at the professorship Machine Elements and Product Development Mr. Schiemann leaves us. The successors trained by him follow in great footprints and take over the tasks in the areas of rolling bearing creeping and tribology. At the farewell party, many memorable moments of the past years were evaluated once again with cakes and barbecue food.

We thank Mr. Schiemann for his support and wish him all the best for the future.

Growing ecological and economic pressure leads to ever higher and more complex stresses in the development of plain bearings. The research at the institute is therefore primarily concerned with the investigation and development of alternative sliding materials and the influence of geometric deviations. The main focus of the investigations is the wear behaviour under the most varied operating conditions (particles, mixed friction, hydrodynamics).

The permissible loads of selected WNV (tapered and cylindrical interference fit as well as feather key, knurled, polygonal joints, etc.) have been investigated primarily at IKAT for decades in the area of fatigue, fatigue and fatigue strength. The behaviour under individual loads (bending, torsion) as well as combined dynamic loads is analysed.

In contact with various components, deformations in connection with the prevailing joint pressure initiate the damage process of friction fatigue (friction corrosion). Current research activities at the institute focus on basic research on the damage phenomenon of friction corrosion and pursue the objective of developing an impact-compliant calculation method.

While conventional mechanisms owe their deformability to the sliding or rolling interfaces in the joints, flexible mechanisms fulfill their function through elastic stretches in places that are deliberately designed to be flexible during design. This functional principle enables novel, shape-adaptive structures, which can be used, for example, in softrobotics or in variable-shape wings. The professorship focuses its research on optimization-based synthesis methods.

The strength tests focus on the tooth root load-bearing capacity of worm gear units. The challenge to numerical imaging lies in the complex geometry and the special material bronze.

The coefficient of static friction (also: coefficient of friction or coefficient of friction) is to be understood as a system variable with a multitude of influencing parameters. In order to use existing potentials in friction-locking connections (e.g. screw, flange, press-fit connections), an experimental investigation is indispensable. With the help of standardized test methods on model samples, a wide variety of tribological configurations are examined at the research centre with regard to their transmission behavior. A major field of research is the synthesis of new design/selection tools for friction-enhancing measures (e.g. micro/laser structures, hard particles, coatings) for static and dynamic load cases.