Have you ever considered how the aerospace industry manages to reduce the weight of their planes? Of course the carbon nacelle and the vertical tail comes into the mind, but what about systems, like the breaks of the aircraft?
How do you stop a fully loaded Airbus A350 with 200 tons on the runway safely? Breaking systems are extremely heavy therefore new technologies need to be developed and applied on future generation of planes. The task however is extremely challenging, because you cannot just replace material A by B, but need to apply sytemthinking in engineering.
Today Composites Lounge introduces you with Xenia Sophia Köneke of DLR - Institut für Systemleichtbau a demonstrator part that displays systemthinking in components manufacture.
And here is the catch: how do you combine lightweight processes like additive manufacturing and injection molding that need to follow a path without start and stops? This is were sophisticated software comes into play.
The approach demonstrated by the DLR Institute for Lightweight Systems, more precisely the DLR Innovation Lab EmpowerAX with their partners 9T Labs, WEBER additive and SWMS is proof that combining conventional composite manufacturing with the high design freedom and agility of the fiber reinforced 3D printing ensures the material is put only where it is really needed.
That is the USP of this systemthought, which brings the functionality into the part that it needs for its application and that makes it cost efficient and resource saving. That's also why the JEC Group's independent jury has awarded it with their elite innovation price.
Xenia and the whole DLR Team are welcoming you to a two day event in Braunschweig Sept. 25/26 in 2024. You will experience high calibre networking, first hand insights into their CFRP (CFK) wing lab and up-to-date know-how co-ordinated by Germany's No 1 aerospace centre.
I will be present on both days, too and encourage you to join our Composites Lounge mission of CREATING SUSTAINABLE VALUE with their partners in Braunschweig.
Once again, I thank the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt e.V. team for organising a public event of this scale, to better our world with sustainable aviation and for opening their doors to the expert public through LinkedIn.
YouTube Podcast: https://youtu.be/YiKUPooJTL4