Expertise

Fraunhofer LBF, EMI and IWU constitute competent and reliable research partners for complex questions of lightweight design, manufacturing, safety and reliability in the automotive sector.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF looks back on 75 years of experience in the field of structural durability and nowadays has expanded this core competence with the expertise in adaptronics, plastics and system reliability. With its overall competences in these fields, customised solutions for safety relevant products are being developed, evaluated and realised by the LBF considering the full added value chain. For the customized solutions, the LBF provides versatile test facilities on more than 17.000 m2 for structural durability, structural dynamics and acoustics including a newly open battery test center.

The Fraunhofer Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI, analyses the physics of high-speed, transient processes in order to develop new approaches and cutting-edge solutions for applications in the automotive sector. Fraunhofer EMI has long gathered great expertise in the area of mechanical characterization as well as numerical modelling and simulation of a wide spectrum of materials, components and structures under dynamic loadings. For this, the Fraunhofer EMI Crash Center comes to good use, with full-vehicle and component crash test facilities, tomography lab and a battery test stand for destructive dynamic tests of electrical energy storage units.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU carries out research in the areas of energy and resource-efficient production processes and production systems (e.g. forming, cutting, joining technologies), digital manufacturing, car bodies, assembly, lightweight design and smart materials. At the Metal Foam Centre foams from various metal materials can be produced and used in sandwich lightweight applications, e.g. in cars.

The Fraunhofer LBF is member of the EPoSS-Technology Platform and EuMAT-Technology Platform. Furthermore, Fraunhofer LBF is member of ERTRAC SIG and EGVIA. The Fraunhofer IWU is a member of EFFRA/ Manufuture.

Participation in EU Projects and International Activities

ALIVE: Multi-material design for electrified vehicles ENLIGHT: Enhanced lightweight design for electrified vehicles Urban-EV: Super light vehicle architectures for urban electric vehicles EPSILON: Novel body lightweight architecture for small passenger vehicles OPTEMUS: Holistic vehicle-occupant-centred approach for optimised energy management and use in electric vehicles EU-LIVE: Efficient urban light vehicles JOIN-EM: Electromagnetic welding for dissimilar materials joining FOCUS: Creating Clusters of Factories of the Future Projects iMain: A novel decision support system for intelligent maintenance