SAMPE Innovation Award 2020 goes to IKV scientist

Vera Dahmen, a scientific assistant at IKV, has received the SAMPE Innovation Award for her Master's thesis "Development of production concepts for thermoplastic composite pressure vessels manufactured by laser-assisted tape winding".

Vera Dahmen receives the SAMPE Innovation Award at the award ceremony in Kassel. | Photo: Henrik Schmutzler

At the SAMPE Symposium in Kassel on 18 February, Vera Dahmen, M.Sc. was delighted to receive the SAMPE Innovation Award. The prize is awarded by SAMPE Deutschland e.V. with the support of the FRIMO Group GmbH and Rolf Dothagen for particularly outstanding final theses. The focus of the research here is on innovative material applications, new processing processes or promising material combinations in the field of composites.

Vera Dahmen was presented with the award for her Master's thesis entitled "Development of production concepts for thermoplastic composite pressure vessels manufactured by laser-assisted tape winding", which she completed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology (IPT).

In the production of thermoplastic FRP pressure vessels by the laser-assisted tape winding process, the tapes are deposited, melted, pressed on and completely consolidated in one step by so-called "in situ consolidation". The thermoplastic winding of composite pressure tanks results in greater design freedom with the winding pattern compared with thermoset winding. In practice, however, the processes for the production of fibre-reinforced parts with a thermoplastic matrix are still derived from established geodetic processes that are based on the production-related boundary conditions of winding with thermoset matrix materials, and thus do not benefit from the advantages of the thermoplastic material. In this award-winning thesis, a larger number of potential aspects were identified that help to gear production to the specific material in the thermoplastic tape winding process. As a result, new production concepts were successfully derived and developed for the laser-assisted tape winding of thermoplastic composite pressure vessels.

IKV would like to congratulate Vera Dahmen on her award.

Contact

Vera Dahmen, M.Sc.
+49 241 80-93809
vera.dahmen@ikv.rwth-aachen.de