Our research fields Research into plastics processing methods and material types

In the field of additive manufacturing, we focus on innovative and application-oriented concepts. This ranges from the development of materials for additive manufacturing to manufacturing concepts, slicing strategies, process and system development and their further development. Milestones in IKV’s history include the development of hybrid production cells with self-designed extruder heads for the production of large-volume moulded parts and the processing of standard granulates, as well as the development of non-planar path planning. With this technology, 3D moulded parts can be produced in a load path-optimised manner and surface roughness, which occurs in classic additive manufacturing as a result of the step effect, can be reduced and avoided.

The Fibre-Reinforced Plastics (FRP) research area looks at processes and process chains for thermoplastic and thermoset FRP. This includes liquid impregnation processes such as RTM and wet pressing, the production and forming of UD tapes and organic sheets, continuous roving processing (pultrusion and winding), the extrusion of long fibre-reinforced moulding compounds and the injection moulding of short and long fibre-reinforced thermoplastics and thermosets. New possibilities for process data collection, digitalisation, simulation and modelling are being developed and validated for process design and process monitoring. Another focus is the development and characterisation of fibre-reinforced materials and components. Current topics include the transfer of lightweight construction strategies to mass production, the development of components and manufacturing processes for hydrogen technologies, the development of recyclable FRP materials and the use of recycled materials for FRP.

The Rubber Technology research area focuses on rubber processing from a process engineering perspective. The core topics are the investigation, design and optimisation of the process steps in the rubber value chain with the design of elastomer components, compounding and mixing, as well as rubber extrusion and elastomer injection moulding. To this end, IKV is developing new methods for the rapid determination and in-line measurement of important processing parameters for direct process control and regulation and for process design. Modelling and machine learning methods are used and further developed to provide digital tools for compound production and process control.

Decoupling the surface properties from the volume properties of a product with the help of plasma technology opens up completely new application spectra and prospects for plastics in the automotive, packaging, medical, agricultural and electrical engineering sectors, as well as in the construction industry. The plasma-based functionalisation of plastic surfaces is used to adjust adhesion, wettability, barrier effect, bondability, scratch resistance and tribological properties. Research at IKV focuses on the development of coating systems with defined functionality, the adaptation of processes to given coating materials, the development and implementation of suitable system concepts, the control and monitoring of plasma processes, as well as surface and process analysis.

Plasma technology is currently playing a central role in the context of a functioning plastics recycling economy, with plasma-based barrier systems replacing multi-material and composite systems, particularly in the packaging sector, and preventing migration processes from products containing recycled materials.

The research area of structural analysis deals with methods for dimensioning components in the interaction of material, process and geometry and develops material models, structural simulations, process simulations and integrative simulation chains for this purpose. Relationships between morphology and mechanical properties are investigated, which enable a better understanding of the processing-related material properties and a cost-optimised characterisation of the long-term and damage behaviour of components. In this way, iterations and prototype tests can be significantly reduced, the technical feasibility and performance of new products and processes can be assessed in advance and the material potential of plastics can be optimally utilised.

The Materials Technology research area is concerned with characterising and modelling the material behaviour of plastics in order to derive material parameters for process and component design. For thermoplastics, thermosets and elastomers, thermoplastic elastomers and fibre-reinforced plastics, the interactions between the individual material components and the physical influences of the processing methods are considered at different levels and mapped using molecular dynamics simulations.