The Walter Reiners-Stiftung (Foundation) of the VDMA Textile Machinery honoured five junior engineers at the trade fair Techtextil, which took place at the beginning of May in Frankfurt.

Two promotion prizes for the best dissertation and master thesis, as well as three creativity awards for clever bachelor and seminar papers, were awarded. Peter D. Dornier, chairman of the Foundation and chairman of the Lindauer Dornier Board of Management, honoured the young engineers.

Mr Dornier commented on the Techtextil special exhibition area called Living in Space, which was the centre focus of the exhibition. “If you look at how technical textiles make space colonisation within reach or how fibre composite materials significantly reduce weight and fuel consumption of cars and aircrafts, it can be rightly claimed that textile machinery is a part of a real high-tech industry. Thus, it is the industry which is attractive for young people who are enthusiastic about new technology,” he said.

The promotion prize in the dissertation category, endowed with EUR 5,000, was awarded to Dr Cornelia Sennewald, TU Dresden. In her doctoral thesis, she developed new technology concepts for production of 3D structures in lightweight design based on a weaving process.

Dirk Fischer, TU Chemnitz, was honoured with a promotion prize worth EUR 3,500 for the best master thesis. In his work, a classic component, namely a bicycle spoke, was replaced with a flexible wire to achieve benefits in weight and dynamics.

Philipp Kempert (TU Dresden), Karsten Neuwerk and Lukas Völkel (both from RWTH Aachen) received creativity awards including a scholarship of EUR 250 a month for two semesters. Mr Kempert developed a shuttle changer for a shuttle loom. Mr Neuwerk’s work deals with light transmitting filaments. Mr Völkel’s bachelor thesis focuses on fabrication of woven-fabrics of multifilament yarns for use as electrode materials in supercapacitors.

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