In addition to a lottery, which is going to reward a lucky participant with tickets for stand and paddock at the DTM race at the Hockenheimring race course, Harke Chemicals will be exhibiting a genuine racer as headturner on their booth this year.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF presented a four-meter-high exhibit at the COMPOSITES EUROPE – which is equipped with sensor technology SHM-wing mock-up of a light aircraft.
Fiber composites offer special advantages because of their lightweight potential in the aviation sector. The lightweight advantages may be more complex because of the damage behavior in comparison with metallic materials therefore they are not always fully exploit. In the airline for example, the impact is from foreign bodies in composite structures is a particular risk factor, limits the applications and often leads to large safety factors that require a certain amount of oversizing. Sensors which recognize, for example in the wing not externally visible structural damage at an early stage can reduce the inspection effort. The operational safety of the structure is ensured by the design and inspections at regular intervals manually. Through automated monitoring with additional structure integrated sensors can be saved in future costs and weight.
The Bodensee Racing Team, or in short BRT, is sponsored amongst others by Harke Chemicals this year. It is one of the teams that takes part in this year’s Formula Student, a competition where students from all over the world compete against each other in self-constructed racing cars. “The contact to the Bodensee Racing Team was established during a booth conversation at the Composites Europe 2009 in Stuttgart, on which we presented epoxy resin systems. After the students from Konstanz had introduced us to the project we immediately decided to sponsor the team with our epoxy resins”, says Dirk Forler, Managing
Director of Harke Chemicals GmbH.
11 March this year saw the launch of the new international “Composites” Masters course, being held in English, at the Private University of Applied Sciences in Göttingen. This means that now, for the first time in Europe, there is a course of studies aimed at resolving the international shortage of graduates in fibre-reinforced plastics. 21 engineers from Spain, France, the United Kingdom, India and Germany will now become experts in carbon composites during the three-semester course.
Every movement must be just right when the blade and rotor hub of a wind turbine are married together at a dizzy height. Because screwing the rotor blade onto the rotor hub 100 metres above the ground represents a major bonding technology challenge. Heavy-duty threaded bushes are bonded into the fibre-reinforced flange on the blade holder of each blade – and the bond must be absolutely rock solid.
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