Invited Speaker
Prof. Alois K. Schlarb
Chair of Composite Engineering (CCe)RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany
Speech Title: High-performance Polymer Composites for Tribological Applications
Abstract: Developments in robotics and electric mobility are currently advancing at a breathtaking pace. Humanoid robots now move with incredible speed and precision. This poses enormous challenges for the tribological systems incorporated into them. Tribological properties are system properties. The qualification of tribological systems is a complex process. The load spectrum of such systems is essentially defined by the combination of surface pressure and sliding velocity; in addition, parameters such as ambient temperature, surface properties of the system partners or component geometries play an important role. By modifying the plastics with various fillers, the reliable development of tribological pairings leads to a multidimensional investigation window with an almost unmanageable experimental effort.
A completely new approach that combines the innovative intelligent testing technology “TriboSmartControl (TSCon)” with artificial intelligence (AI) tools can efficiently and reliably determine the effects of a wide range of load spectra.
The talk highlights the relationships and mechanisms that have been explored over the past decades, but also the limitations of this approach for the targeted development of high-performance tribocomposites.
The talk shows that AI tools can make a decisive contribution to solving this issue. For example, artificial neural networks are superior to the human brain in pattern recognition. This can be useful in predicting tribological properties depending on a variety of loads. However, ANNs require a large amount of data as input, which can be achieved in a time and cost-efficient manner with the intelligent testing technology presented here.
Keywords: Tribology, high performance composites, artificial intelligence, intelligent testing.
Biography: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alois K. Schlarb was appointed a full professor of “Composite Materials” at RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany, in 2002; he serves as principal investigator at the OPTIMAS Research Center and as a visiting professor at Qingdao University of Science and Technology, China. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Kaiserslautern and a Ph.D. from the University of Kassel. Before returning to academia as a full professor and scientific and executive director of the Institute for Composite Materials (2002–2008), he successfully led industrial research initiatives for 13 years, including at BASF SE in Ludwigshafen and at B. Braun Medical AG in Switzerland. From 2003 to 2015, he served as president of SAMPE Germany and from 2009 to 2015 as spokesperson for the Scientific Alliance of Plastics Technology (WAK). His research focuses on process-structure-property relationships and the tribology of polymer-based hybrid materials. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles and authored several books.