International trade fair for technical textiles and nonwovens Techtextil, that was held in Frankfurt from 10-13 June, provided the framework for this year’s award ceremony of the Walter Reiners-Stiftung (Foundation) of the German textile machinery industry, honouring three successful junior engineers,  who focused on energy efficiency and lightweight construction.

Sustainability – realistic and tangible

Peter D. Dornier, chairman of the Lindauer Dornier Board of Management and chairman of Walter Reiners-Stifung, in his speech, outlined the textile machinery industry as the starting point of intelligent applications  in the field of sport, automotive, aviation and space industry, construction and engineering.

Fibre reinforced materials, such as composites, exert a special fascination in these sectors. They prove particularly useful, where reduction of weight is required like, for example, in  cars and aircraft. Composites make a major contribution to reduction of petrol and kerosene consumption and are as such concrete examples for sustainability, Dornier explained.

Creative and innovative

The promotion prize in the dissertation category endowed with 5,000 Euros was awarded to Dr Heiko Schenuit of RWTH Aachen. In his thesis he developed solutions which considerably increase the energy efficiency of weaving machines.

Lars Appel, also of RWTH Aachen, was awarded with the promotion prize of 3,000 Euros in the diploma category. The procedure presented in his diploma thesis helps to further rationalise the production of composites.

Sebastian Schneider of TU Dresden was rewarded for the best student research with the creativity prize endowed with 2,000 Euros. His study explains creative concepts to optimise material flow during production of composite components. This is another step forward to a substantial automation of composite manufacturing.

Promoting talents

With the Walter Reiners-Stiftung, the VDMA Textile Machinery Association is actively engaged in promoting junior engineers. Each year the foundation provides an incentive for top performers by granting two promotion prizes for dissertations and master/diploma thesis as well as one creativity prize for seminar papers.

Students regularly gain an insight into practice with excursions to member companies and to the leading textile exhibition ITMA, which are financially supported by the foundation. Particularly  high performingstudents are supported by scholarships.

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