Research Database: Projects

After the change of government in NRW in 2011 the extension of wind energy became a vital political topic. Untill 2020, 15 percent of the electric consumption in NRW shall be based on wind power; currently it is only about four percent. With the latest law from July 2011 ("Windenergieerlass") and further counselling offers (EnergieAgentur.NRW, Netzwerk Windkraft) the government tries to support the expansion of wind power stations as well as planing projects with local communes.  Even though the energy revolution, renewable energy or wind power are supported in public, the construction of new power stations or "repowering" (replacing old stations by new and more efficient ones) also encounters resistance. Lacking acceptance may cause delays which will lead to higher costs. At the very beginning conversations have been hold with the EnergieAgentur.NRW and experts for wind power (Netzwerk Windkraft). They affirmed that research about the acceptance of wind power will be important for policy, the communes, but also for the citizens. EnergieAgentur.NRW offered their support for the pilot study by conveying this project to the deputy major of the selected commune. According to literature, acceptance is influenced by many factor. Its strength depends on the object and subject of accepteance as well as on the context. The goal of this pilot project is to establish a groundwork for acceptance research and to analyse communication as a measure for public acceptance. The reporting of the public media, which has found only little attention to this date, will now stand in focus. The way how media reported about the construction of new wind parks and the resulting influence on the acceptance of energy projects is the main goal.

The aim of this project is make use of clinker reduced Portland cements in order to reduce the energy input during production and therfore also the CO2 emission. This is realised via a syergetic activation of puzzolans. Using the metacaolin Metaver could reduce the Portland cement input by 25% without a considerable reduction of the resulting bending tensile strength. Only the compressive strength lowered about 10 - 15%. Conducting Life-Cycle-Assesments already during the project made it possible to take an immediate impact on the costs and the Global Warming Potential (GWP).  

The aim of this project is to develop an individualised and functional carrier material for bone defects. The main focus is put on the multi-step development of an individualised, functional carrier material the osteogene differentiation by external factors (CD73, P1 receptors) the use of adult stem cells for the differentiation of osteoblasts the synthesis of new carrier material und their chemical modifications

Lignin is one of the most important components of all plants (about 30% in wood), right after cellulose. Worldwide about 50 million tons of techniqually isolated lignins are gained during pulp production but only 2% of it is acutally used. Aim of this project is to recycle and modify the lignin "waste" so that lignin based polymers can be generated and used for building issues. About 25% of all synthetic materials are used in the construction sector. Foams are almost exclusively based on fossil sources, e.g. Polystyrene insulants or Polyurethan (PU)-foams. Due to the steady improvement of insulants for office as well as for private buildings, the demand is rising continously. Here, also lignin could play an important role in the future: Mostly used for energetic issues, it could now find application as a mechanical alternative for improved insulations. The distinct adherance properties of lignin can be used to produce lignin based construction material, e.g. for better sound insulation. Moreover, the recycled lignin can be tested as a substituent in glues or binding agents instead of phenol.  

The aim of this project is to investigate the hardening process of light-curing dental filling components. This is realised by tracking the process in real time with the help of the dielectric analysis (DEA). This method enables to track the behaviour of resins while hardening in the electric alternating field. The DEA is method that is used frequently, mostly in the aerospace and automotive industry, but less in the dental fields. Due to its great resolution in time and its sensitivity the DEA can be used for fast initiation processes as well as for slow post-curing processes after light exposure.  The goal is to learn more about the hardening processes and their different parameters, e.g. reaction temperature, resing compostition, viscosity, light intensity and depth of radiation. This data is crucial for kinetic modelling of polymerisation and hardening processes.

The goal of the Development of Vehicle Exteriors (DoVE) project is to explore new techniques in the automated engineering of three dimensional objects. We take the crafting of the aerodynamic shells which surround velomobiles as a test case, using evolutionary methods to develop stable, aerodynamic, light-weight designs.

The majority of work aimed at increasing transportation efficiency is centered around engineering: whether improving the efficiency of motors, the aerodynamics of the vehicle, or reducing the weight of the entire vehicle. Only now we are approaching an era where we can look to the automatic control of the vehicle as another opportunity to reduce fuel use. As a long overlooked area, it appears that even initial advances can have large benefits. In multiple pilot programs, single-day programs training automobile drivers to drive in a more fuel-efficient fashion brought reductions of between 10% and 20% in fuel consumption. For a heavy commercial truck in Europe, each percentage decrease saves nearly 500L of gasoline in a year. By controlling our vehicles not with a few lessons from a course, but with the aid of clever algorithms, we can expect even greater improvements.   

The question of how to produce effective and appropriate physical training plans is of great importance in many areas. For both professional and amateur athletes, getting the most out of every training session and progressing toward a long term fitness goal is of obvious interest. Even more important is the building of physical fitness for the less able-bodied. For cardiovascular patients and those in need of physical rehabilitation, the effectiveness of physical training is a quality of life issue of critical importance. Regardless of the application or goal, it is important to avoid injury or exhaustion due to training, and at the same time achieve the maximum long term performance improvement.

In this project Fraunhofer SCAI uses highly modern molecular midelling for the simulation of octanol-water and membrane-water distribution coefficients. Both of them are important to  rate the toxicity of those chemicals. The octanol-water distribution indicates the affinity of a chemical to biological material. In contrast, the membrane-water distribution shows how fast a chemical can intrude a biological cell. These experiments are not easy to perform due to the extremely low IL-concentrations. Therefore, the simulation is a good and realistic alternative concerning the accuracy and the price. 

The aim of this project is to develop a simulator that is able to simulate the beaviour of blow moulding machines for Kautex Maschinenbau, even before implementation. The vitrual blow moulding machine consists of mechanic, hydraulic and pneumatic components in order to reconstruct realistic conditions. This enables a simulation of the control systems before the machine is constructed. The virtual implementation will partly replace the real implementation, which will lead to time and cost saving. Last but not least, trainings of the personell can be performed much more realistic unsing a simulation program.