Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT
Description and project goals
Initial situation and idea
Hybrid materials, also known as multi-material combinations, are increasingly used in mechanical engineering, aerospace, or the automotive sector nowadays. The material combinations are just as diverse as the joining techniques. In addition to bonding, mechanical connections such as bolts are also widely used. The properties of hybrid materials depend to a large extent on the joining technique and the process parameters.
There are scattered collections of data on specific material properties, but these have not yet been systematically collected, collated, or made available. Thus, time- and resource-intensive "trial-and-error" experiments need to be carried out when developing new hybrid structures. As part of the "MaterialDigital 2" initiative for the digitization of materials research in Germany (BMBF), the "HybridDigital" project aims to make a significant contribution to the digitized and sustainable development of hybrid structures for lightweight construction.
Short project description
The aim of the project is to establish and evaluate a knowledge base for handling characteristic values of hybrid materials and to represent them by means of ontologies. The focus of the joining techniques in this project lies on bonding and bolting for steel-carbon fiber composite hybrids. Fraunhofer IDMT's AI-based acoustic monitoring is also used for efficient process selection and design of the hybrid compounds.
Early detecting of defects in the production of novel materials
For a more efficient production of hybrid materials, Fraunhofer IDMT in the scope of this project develops machine learning (ML) algorithms based on acoustic emissions to predict faulty manufacturing or deviations in the production of novel materials. New here: these algorithms work on the basis of data from real experiments as well as simulated audio data.
With the development and production of hybrid materials, which is to be more robust, sustainable and - above all - digital in the future by means of comprehensive data collections, the project meets the challenges for the technical realization of diverse lightweight construction concepts at the material and process level.