Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology
Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology

Mobility

Globalization causes an increase in mobility of people and goods while cost for fuels is rising. Together with leading manufacturers of cars, rail vehicles, ships, airplanes and their suppliers we are working on environmentally friendly, resource-efficient and flexible concepts of mobility for the future.

We realize innovations along the entire process chain while considering the main future trends: car bodies and powertrain components with optimized weight are essential prerequisites for the success of electric mobility. By relocating functions into the materials, installation space can be saved and active components can be realized, for example, to counteract undesired vibrations or sound radiation at their location of origin. Multi-material design in car body construction requires new developments in the areas of forming processes, joining and assembly processes.

Projects

 

for gearbox hollow shaft manufacturing

Ultra-short process chains

A process chain demonstrator for the manufacturing of gearbox hollow shafts was created and evaluated under factory conditions. This extremely short process chain is both based on forming and considers the three levels of the technology, the factory and the human being. The overall process chain was designed and refined by optimisation. New approaches to monitoring these procedures in terms of the data flow by the human being were tested.

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Automated assembly of aircraft wings

The volume air traffic has soared in the past few decades, and aircraft manufacturer Airbus expects to see this figure triple by 2030. On a single day, more than 1,300 take-offs and landings are handled by the flight tower at Frankfurt's international airport. This represents no less than 155,000 passengers who pass through this airport each day. To provide sufficient planes to cover this need for air transportation capacity, aircraft manufacturers will have to modernize their production processes.

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Scalable electric drive for buses, trucks etc.

Although electric cars meet current trends, driving axles are still too heavy, too expensive and too large for them. To address this situation, Fraunhofer researchers joined forces with partners to design an optimized axle module for commercial vehicles. It is powerful, lightweight, compact and cost-effective.

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