Annual report 2018

Redesigning old values.

Dear customers and partners of Fraunhofer LBF,

2018, our anniversary year, is behind us – and it was definitely an exciting, eventful year.
We have worked intensively with you and accomplished much that we are proud of.

In light of the urgent challenges for sustainable product solutions, the launch of the Fraunhofer excellence cluster ”Circular Plastics Economy (CPE)” was an important milestone last year. As a core institute, we are working with our partners on solutions that move the plastic value chain from a previously linear to a circular closed-loop economy. One of the primary focuses is to strengthen the recycling of materials and raw materials through advanced technologies and digital systems. This includes digital tracking of materials and products throughout their entire lifecycle so that effective closed-loop options can be created from production through to recycling. This enables us to contribute to the technically and economically successful, sustainable implementation of modern structures.

A total of six of the Fraunhofer excellence clusters are now operating, and we are very pleased to be able to make a significant contribution to our CPE, addressing a scientifically and socially very important, cutting edge topic.

Furthermore, over the course of the last year, scientists in many other industrial and research projects, focusing on topics like digitalization in the development and safeguarding process, sustainable and safe lightweight construction, and smart structures, developed exciting solutions that unveil new opportunities in product development for you, our customers. For example, we have developed a new cyber-physical method that can be used to examine the behavior of mobility components under complex constraints during the development process across multiple locations. In the field of vibration technology, actuators for multi-axial vibration reduction and sensors for structure monitoring as multifunctional system components were realized through additive manufacturing. Moreover, in our materials research we successfully developed a new sustainable polymer material derived from used beverage bottles in combination with stable long glass fibers.

We have prepared these and many other projectsfor you in our second digital annual report.

LBF has been active for 80 years already, and as you will see from the detailed presentation of the projects, the topics on ”Safety and Reliability of Commercial Lightweight Structures” are just as relevant today as they were then. This was confirmed by the numerous, consistently positive responses from our partners and customers, who took the opportunity during the official anniversary celebration in June to go beyond the previous mutual relationship experience the full range of our skills and research live. We will join you in systematically exploring these topics more in-depth in the proven tradition of our institute in order to be well prepared for future challenges, developments and new topics.

I want to extend my gratitude to all of our customers and partners from the industrial and research sectors for their continued support and trust. This trust is made possible by the dedicated work of the Fraunhofer LBF staff, and I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to them. Keep up the great work!

My team and I are looking forward to new challenges and hope you will enjoy these articles!