Business unit Component safety

Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM

© Fraunhofer IWM

Profile of business unit

Our work concentrates on evaluating the safety and effectiveness of components that are subject to high safety standards in operation. The applications include proof-of-safety certificates for power stations components, proof of component failure tolerances for aerospace applications, lifetime analysis of thermomechanically stressed components in power stations and vehicles and crash analyses of vehicle components. When carrying out this work, we are not only interested in the behavior of modern materials in use, but also in joints and in hybrid design.

Range of services

  • Development of evaluation concepts for power station and machine components.
  • Safety analyses of failure mechanics, evaluation of failure tolerance and load calculations for highly stressed and safety-relevant components.
  • Characterization of materials and components under operational conditions subject to static, thermomechanical or abrupt, dynamic loads.
  • Lifetime models for high temperature components in the automotive and power station industries, plant engineering and aircraft turbine construction.
  • Evaluation of service life for welded joints.
  • Crash simulation of automobile components with customized material models.
  • Evaluation of welding and hybrid joints under crash conditions.
  • Characterization and modeling of plastics and glued joints under crash conditions.

Main issues

The work in this unit is focused on the further development of evaluation concepts for fracture mechanics that take the relevant loading conditions for each component and the scattering of material properties and defect size into account. Another main area of work is the development and implementation of mechanism-based material models for different applications that describe the deformation and failure behavior of components under thermal and mechanical loads. Crash analysis is increasingly focused on determining the influence of the manufacturing process on the failure behavior of automobile structures.

Methods

We have an extensive range of testing equipment with which to characterize a wide variety of materials and components at the relevant temperatures and loading speeds. The experimental results provide the basis for the development and verification of material models and failure concepts, which can then be used to mathematically describe component behavior.