Press Releases

Dr. Silke Sommer, Head of the Component Safety and Lightweight Design Business Unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM, is the first woman to be honored with the prestigious Carl von Bach Medal of the University of Stuttgart Materials Testing Institute on October 8, 2024 at the MPA Seminar of the University of Stuttgart. This award recognizes her pioneering contributions to research in materials mechanics, particularly in the fields of crash simulation and lightweight construction technology.

Professor Erwin Sommer, the former long-standing head of institute of the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg and Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS in Hall (Saale), which was founded during his tenure, passed away on 16 June 2024 at the age of 88. Sommer pioneered the introduction of fracture mechanics as a field of research in Germany in the 1960s and in addition to his work as a scientist, he was active on numerous committees. He helped define the fabric of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft as chair of the Scientific and Technical Council and founder and long-standing head of the Fraunhofer Group for Materials.

Due to crises such as the coronavirus pandemic or suspended trade agreements, supply bottlenecks occur time and again. Raw materials such as nickel, magnesium and rare earths, which industry needs to manufacture a wide range of products, are not always available — often for long periods of time. This is where a new Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft flagship project comes in: Since January 2024, six Fraunhofer Institutes have been researching how sustainable and resilient supplies can be maintained and secured. The four-year interdisciplinary project aims to create the information basis for preserving materials and components in the highest possible quality and feeding them into the cycle.

Many tribological systems are operated at their load limits for reasons of efficiency. Lubrication gaps are becoming narrower and lubricating films must withstand greater loads. For the reliable design of such systems, development and construction depend on precise calculation methods. However, conventional calculation approaches fail when it comes to so-called boundary lubrication. Prof. Michael Moseler and Dr. Kerstin Falk from the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg have succeeded in clarifying the mechanisms of boundary lubrication and making them predictable. This opens a path to new design possibilities for high-performance tribosystems. They present their groundbreaking approach in a renowned scientific journal.

Rolling bearings are installed wherever something is in rotation. The wide range of applications extends from large wind turbines to small electric toothbrushes. These bearings, which consist of steel components, must be carefully selected and tested with regard to their quality and the application in question. The grain size has a crucial effect on the mechanical properties of the steel. Up to now, the size of the microscopic crystallites has been assessed by metallographers by way of visual inspection — a subjective and error-prone method. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM, in collaboration with Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG, have developed a deep learning model that enables objective and automated assessment and determination of the grain size.

Mechanical bearings and gearboxes — like those used in electric vehicles and wind farms — are often treated with lubricants to avoid friction and wear. However, these components might be under voltage. This would impair the effectiveness of the lubricants to such a degree that the tribological contacts are damaged. As part of the Lube.Life joint research project, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM have developed a virtual lubricant lab, which can be used to predict the effects of electrical fields on lubricant stability. As a result, customized formulations for new lubricants can be created.

Increasing demands on sheet metal forming processes require ever more extensive experimental characterizations of the original base materials. At the same time, the characterization tests used are constantly facing new challenges due to the use of thinner sheets of metal. The Virtual Lab of the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg provides a remedy for this: It determines the necessary characteristic values for the design of sheet metal forming processes via simulation. The Fraunhofer IWM is cooperating with the University of Twente in the Netherlands to further develop the Virtual Lab.

Programmable materials are true shapeshifters. They can change their characteristics in a controlled and reversible way with the push of a button, independently adapting to fit new conditions. They can be used, for example, to make comfy chairs or mattresses that prevent bedsores. To produce these, the support is formed in such a way that the contact surface is large which, as a result, lowers the pressure on parts of the body. This type of programmable material is being developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Programmable Materials CPM, who plan to bring it to the market with the help of industry partners. One of their goals is to reduce the use of resources.

Additive manufacturing of tools using a laser powder bed fusion process offers a great number of advantages: It is economical, precise and allows for customized solutions. That said, it can be difficult to determine the optimal process parameters, such as the scan speed or power of the laser. For the first time, researchers at Fraunhofer are now simulating the process at the microstructure level in order to identify direct correlations between the workpiece properties and the selected process parameters. To do this, they are combining a number of different simulation methods.

20 percent of the energy generated worldwide is lost through friction. With new materials, surfaces and lubricants, 40 percent of this energy could be saved in the long term — equivalent to CO2 emissions of more than three gigatons per year! Superlubricity in machine elements is one way to achieve this goal. Fraunhofer researchers are working to bring superlubricity from the laboratory into real-world application.