Collaborative Research Center/Transregio 39 "PT-PIESA"

The Collaborative Research Center/Transregio “High-Volume Production-Compatible Production Technologies for Light metal and Fiber Composite-Based Components with Integrated Piezo Sensors and Actuators“ – short: „PT-PIESA“ – is dealing with scientific fundamentals for an economic production of active structural components. The application potential is immens: 

• Two-dimensional lightweight components with integrated sensors and actuators actively reduce their noise emission. Thus, the usage of heavy insulating material in the car body in automobile engineering becomes redundant.
  
• Integrated sensors and actuators can be used for the Health-Monitoring of safety components or for actively changing the component strength in case of crashing. In mechanical engineering numerous applications are conceivable for damping the vibration in order to increase the machining quality and machine dynamics.
  
• Materially integrated high-power actuators are needed in the automation technology for pumps, valves and regulatory elements.
  
• In medical technology e.g. intelligent prostheses can be produced by means of integrated sensors and actuators.

The development of new production technologies joining the process chains for manufacturing mechanical components and sensor-actuator modules is essential for the success of these product innovations as an inexpensive serial production of active components can be facilitated for the first time.
Project partners are Chemnitz and Dresden University of Technology, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IMF Chemnitz/Dresden, the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS Dresden as well as the Bavarian Laser Center Erlangen.

The German Research Association (DFG) funded the twelve subprojects with seven million Euro in the first funding term from 2006 to 2010. After positive evaluation DFG extended its funding until 06/2014 supporting 15 scientific sub projects by ten million Euro.