From September 26-28, new trends and current developments in natural fiber reinforced plastics (NFRP) were discussed at the Peter-Dierich-Haus in Zittau.

While September 28 was reserved for the non-public partnership meeting, in which the project partners exchanged information on the current status of work, the first two days were designed as a scientific symposium.

This was kicked off by two evening lectures, which did not focus on the material NFK, but on the path to it from an IT perspective. Dr. Klimant (TU Chemnitz) spoke about the possibilities ofaugmented and virtual reality in mechanical and plant engineering, while Prof. Lässig (HSZG) focused on the security of IT infrastructures, which are also becoming increasingly important in Industry 4.0 approaches.

Finally, on September 27, everything revolved around NFK. Various speakers shed light on the latest developments. The topics ranged from hybrid construction methods (Dr. Rinberg, TU Chemnitz) and their applications in vehicle construction (Dr. Becker, Yanfeng Automotive Interieurs), bio-inspired approaches to NFRP based on the coconut (Dr. Graupner, HS Bremen) to oil absorbers based on seagrass (Dipl.-Ing. Siegel & Dipl.-Ing. Unbehaun, TU Dresden). Not only these, but also many other presentations and poster contributions stimulated discussion. The program can be downloaded here. At the end of the day, Prof. Kreisel gave a talk entitled " How green is green really?" on life cycle assessments, which made the audience smile and gave them food for thought on this complex topic.

"The breadth of the program, which combined topics from both basic and applied research, was impressive and showed the potential for further research on LCAs that still exists and is far from being exhausted. I am convinced that NFRP has significant advantages over other fiber-reinforced materials, e.g. in recycling, but that these still need to be put into practice."

This is the assessment of Prof. Dr. Weber, the partnership spokesperson for the ^LaNDER3 project at the symposium.

As part of the closed partnership meeting, the project staff presented the work status of their sub-projects, which led to valuable discussions. Mr. Prescher from Strucnamics GmbH, who presented an SME project on process data analysis and networking planned as part of the project, took us back to the first day of the symposium with the topic of data and IT in the production process.

Above all, we would like to thank the business partners present (kluge GmbH, SWR metalfloat and Scholz Recycling GmbH, RTT Steinert GmbH, ULT AG), including the Chairman of the ^LaNDER3 Advisory Board, Dr. Socher (BASF Schwarzheide GmbH), for their impetus and participation. Further thanks go to the staff of the Technology and Facility Management Department for their active support.

Contact:

Dr. Matthias Kinne
Project Manager
matthias.kinne@hszg.de
www.hszg.de/LaNDER3