Car Body, Lightweight Construction and Safety

Weight reduction is one of the biggest challenges in automotive engineering: Lighter vehicles consume less fuel and help reduce CO₂ emissions. With many years of expertise in researching materials, processes and technologies as well as systems engineering, we support automotive manufacturers and their suppliers in developing lightweight design concepts and processing advanced materials.

Body construction in particular benefits from material-optimized multi-material design: laser-based processes for joining and cutting as well as additive manufacturing technologies allow the realization of similar and hybrid lightweight designs using modern materials such as aluminum and fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) composites. We also concentrate our research on safety-relevant topics such as airbag manufacturing and pollutant-free car interiors.

Technologies for Metal Lightweight Construction
 

• Laser cutting of body components made of modern materials
• Joining of metallic mixed joints (e.g. Laser welding of car body components)
• Additive manufacturing of topology-optimized components: Processing of high-strength light metals (e.g. TiAl materials)
• Laser roll plated transition joints for high-strength mixed metal joints (e.g. aluminum-steel)
• Combined large-scale and system technology for laser hardening and laser cladding for car body production

• Laser cutting of fiber composites
• Adhesive bonding and direct thermal joining of metals, plastics, glass and ceramics
• Fast and material-friendly joining of different materials with reactive multilayer systems (RMS)
• Laser patterning and functional coatings of fiber composites: Joining and coating pretreatment, conductive coatings, heating layer systems, protective and barrier coatings
• Additively manufactured structures for metal-composite joints: Transition joints and clamping structure
  

• Construction solutions for lightweight and stressed crash components: simulation, design and local laser hardening

• Highly flexible laser fabrication of textile airbag blanks
  
• Filter solutions for pollutant-free car interiors