The VDI Society Materials Engineering (GME) honors Max Weihermüller M.Sc. from the Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV) in Industry and Crafts at RWTH Aachen University with the Young Talent Award for Plastics Technology 2020. Weihermüller received the award for his outstanding Master's thesis. The prize money of EUR 3,000 was donated this year by Allod Werkstoff GmbH and W. Müller GmbH Blasformtechnik.
For the jury, Max Weihermüller's Master's thesis, which he wrote under Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Hopmann at the IKV in Aachen, was the best plastics engineering thesis this year. Weihermüller successfully developed and validated the identification of a suitable inline measurement method for detecting manufacturing defects in the laminate structure of wound type 4 pressure vessels.
In the wet winding process, a lack of knowledge about the actual strip lay-up and the subsequent influence of the manufacturing process on the resulting winding path leads to an increase in safety factors in the component design. The use of a suitable inline measuring method can help to detect sources of error locally and thus take them into account more specifically in the design.
The prize was donated by GME in 2013 and is awarded for outstanding university theses in the field of plastics technology.
