Assuring quality in lightweight construction
Boats, airplanes and spacecrafts are getting lighter and lighter: Lightweight structures help save fuel and lower CO2 emissions. 'To ensure that police and marine emergency services can rely on their lifeboats, even in high seas, the lightweight components undergo comprehensive quality assurance before being put to actual use,' affirms Joachim Montnacher, Head of Department for Testing Systems at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart. Together with Dr Tina Wilhelm, Group Manager for Measurement and Testing Technology, and colleague Wolfgang Schmidt, the experts are hard at work on quality assurance systems for lightweight construction. At the Composites Europe trade show, the researchers will present a combination of two testing systems: shearography and thermography...