The VDMA Textile Machinery Federation, acting for the Walter Reiners Foundation has awarded five young engineers with a total of EUR 17,500.

Peter D. Dornier, member of the executive board of the VDMA branch and chairman of the Walter Reiners Foundation, presented the awards at a special ceremony held at the Digital Capability Centre (DCC) in Aachen, Germany.

The prize winner in the dissertation category, Benjamin Weise, comes from the Institute of Textile Technology at RWTH Aachen University (ITA). He has dealt with a complex production process for the manufacture of modified multifilament yarns, which offers new perspectives for the development and manufacture of textile charge carriers.

Susanne Fischer, winner of the Master’s Thesis category, has systematically and comprehensively solved the challenging task of integrating motion sensors into a finger glove at Reutlingen University.

The 2018 creativity award winners are Jan Merlin Abram and Alon Tal from ITA Aachen, along with Eric Otto from the Institute for Textile Machinery and High-Performance Textile Materials Technology (ITM) in Dresden. The ITA students have developed a guideline for the design of hybrid morphing textiles. In addition to the classic functions in conventional, and in particular composite applications, locally defined, functionally effective joint, torsion, expansion and compression mechanisms can be integrated into the textile.

Eric Otto was awarded for a concept study for the development of a circular knitting machine with a variable diameter needle cylinder, which can lead to further flexibility in the circular knitting process.