Page 14 - ILK Research Report 2020

Presentation of the certificate by WAK member Prof. Dr. Maik Gude to Dr. Michael Stegelmann © Sebastian Spitzer

WAK Award 2020 for ILK scientist

The Scientific Alliance of the University Professors of Plas- injection molding or extrusion are becoming increasingly
tics Technology (WAK) annually awards prizes for the best interesting. The challenge here is the implementation of
scientific work in the field of plastics technology. This year, a component manufacturing process that meets the high
ILK scientist Dr. Michael Stegelmann was delighted to re- demands of aviation and offers a wide range of variants,
ceive the Brose Prize for new processes and techniques as well as the reproducible processing of high-perfor-
in plastics processing. In his dissertation entitled "On the mance polymers.
extrusion of amorphous high-performance thermo-plastic
pipes with variable wall thickness", Dr. Stegelmann made a In this context, Dr. Michael Stegelmann has developed
significant contribution to enabling extrusion technology novel, analytical design models which for the first time
for the variable production of aerospace piping systems. allow to predict the process limits for variable process
control on the basis of the polymer's extensional rhe-
In high-tech fields of application, such as aviation, light- ological properties. This makes it possible to cover the
weight engineering technologies based on high-perfor- high product variety of piping systems in the aviation
mance polymers create enormous potential for sustainable industry with economically reasonable utilization of the
mass reduction. In connection with the increasing volume plant technology. The resulting increase in the variability
of aviation and the associated production of aircraft, there of production technology is a major trend in mechanical
is a need for completely new production architectures with and plant engineering in the plastics industry, in order to
levels of automation that have not been common in this achieve a higher degree of individuality of the products
industry until now. This is why classic, highly automated while exploiting the high output rates.
and mass-producible plastics processing methods such as

14