Achieving lightweight construction through only material substitution does not realize the full potential of producing a lightweight material, hence, it is no longer sufficient. Weight-saving goals are best achieved through additional function integration. In order to implement this premise for mass production, a manufacturing process for joining and forming hybrid laminates using a new tool concept is presented. All materials used are widely producible and processable. The manufactured cover of an automotive center console serves to demonstrate a human interface device with impact detection and action execution. This is only possible through a machine learning system, which is implemented on a small—and thus space- and energy-saving—embedded system. The measurement results confirm the objective and show that localization was sufficiently accurate.

This work investigates a new generation structural health monitoring (SHM) system for fibre metal laminates (FML) based on an embedded thermoplastic film with compounded piezoceramics, termed piezo-active fibre metal laminate (PFML). The PFML is manufactured using near-series processes and its potential as a passive SHM system is being investigated. A commercial Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) sensor film is used for comparative evaluation of the sensor signals. Furthermore, thermoset and thermoplastic-based FML are equipped with the sensor films and evaluated. For this purpose, static and dynamic three-point bending tests are carried out and the data are recorded. The data obtained from the sensors and the testing machine are compared with the type and time of damage by means of intelligent signal processing. By using a smart sensor system, further investigations are planned which the differentiation between various failure modes, e.g., delamination or fibre breakage.

Impact detection using piezoelectric sensors is an actual and widespread research field. The current work provides an approach for a real-time realization of an impact detection system using deep learning methods. For realization a hardware software co-design approach is used utilizing hardware acceleration by a continuous pipelining FPGA structure. The concept describes the hardware software partitioning of the underlying functions and the methodology for ensuring continuous data processing and the associated real-time capability. The behavior of the hardware is realized with the help of a finite state machine and thus the correctness of the data is ensured and the impact identification is realized. The results show the real-time capability as well as a reasonable resource utilization of the FPGA design.

The required energy savings can be achieved in all automotive domains through weight savings and the merging of manufacturing processes in production. This fact is taken into account through functional integration in lightweight materials and manufacturing in a process close to large-scale production. In previous work, separate steps of a process chain for manufacturing a center console cover utilizing a sensoric hybrid laminate have been developed and evaluated. This includes the process steps of joining, forming and inline polarization as well as connecting to an embedded system. This work continues the research process by evaluating impact localization methods to use the center console as a haptic input device. For this purpose, different deep learning methods are derived from the state of the art and analyzed for their applicability in two consecutive studies. The results show that MLPs, LSTMs, GRUs and CNNs are suitable to localize impacts on the novel laminate with high localization rates of up to 99%, and thus the usability of the developed laminate as a haptic input device has been proven.

Die Osteoporose stellt eine der grössten Herausforderungen in der instrumentierten Wirbelsäulenchirurgie dar. Verschiedene prä-, intra- und postoperative Ansätze können verfolgt werden um die Komplikationsrate zu verringern. Die verschiedenen Ansätze werden in diesem Artikel beleuchtet. Osteoporosis is one of the biggest challenges for instrumented spinal surgery. Different pre-, intra- and postoperative approaches can be used to reduce the complication rate. The different approaches are highlighted in this manuscript. Publication Date: 17 May 2022 (online) © 2022. Thieme. All rights reserved. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany