The VDMA Textile Machinery Association has honoured seven successful young engineers at the award ceremony that took place at the Dornier Aviation & Aerospace Museum in Friedrichshafen.

Every year the Walter Reiners-Stiftung foundation of the German textile machinery industry launches several promotion and creativity prizes for young engineers.

This time, as recognition for outstanding dissertations, master thesis and project studies, the President of the Foundation and Chairman of the Lindauer DORNIER Board of Management, Peter D. Dornier, has invited the laureates to a Zeppelin flight over the lake Constance region.

Issues of the future

The Dornier Aviation & Aerospace museum, which is an inspiring celebration of the pioneer spirit and makes it possible to experience highest technical performance, was the ideal framework to honour the forward-looking studies of the young academics, the association believes.

In his celebratory speech Peter D. Dornier characterised the textile machinery industry as real high-tech incubator, which contributes in a decisive manner to meet the challenges of automotive engineering and medical technology and provides convincing answers exceeding the classical fields of application such as apparel and home textiles.

Dissertation category

The promotion prize in the dissertation category endowed with EUR 5,000 has been awarded to Dr Thorsten Heinze of Technical University (TU) Chemnitz.

He undertook further research on polyester fibres as alternative to braided metallic ropes used for conveyor technology. Fields of application are elevators, cranes and shaft hoisting systems.

Master theses

Due to the excellent quality of two master theses this year, the promotion prizes in this category, each endowed with EUR 3,000, have been given to Moniruddoza Ashir of TU Dresden and Markus Appelmann of Hochschule Mannheim (University of Applied Sciences).

The study presented by Ashir deals with hybrid woven structures for lightweight applications, which can be used from automotive engineering to sports equipment like tennis rackets or golf clubs. The master thesis of Appelmann with a very practical approach is devoted to the development of a bench for testing the loop formation on warp knitting machines.

Creativity award

A team of students of RWTH Aachen has been honoured with the creativity award of EUR 2,000. Dominik Granich, Gerrit Hartmann, Andreas Schulz und Philipp Schleer presented a concept for development of a braiding machine for stents. These can be applied in medicine for treating vascular diseases.

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