Institut Für Verbundwerkstoffe

Website: http://www.ivw.uni-kl.de/
Country: Germany

The Institut fur Verbundwerkstoffe GmbH (IVW) is a non-profit research institute located at Kaiserslautern, Germany. IVW was founded in 1990 by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The institute’s mission is to research and develop technical applications of composites and their potential, and to communicate currently known facts in this field to companies, research centres and interested individuals. Its main competence lies in the field of polymer based composite materials and IVW covers the whole area from material science, design and calculation aspects to production technology. The organisation of IVW reflects the holistic approach required, necessary in particular because of the broad field of composite application. The equipment available for design, testing, analysis and especially manufacturing science is state-of-the-art technology and meets, or exceeds, all industrial requirements and enables IVW to work on projects beginning from the idea and finishing with a full size prototype. IVW is working in the field of lightweight pressure vessels and the according processing technologies. Process as well as component development for all kinds of applications is the main focus in this field. IVW has developed several special techniques, e.g. for high efficient wet winding by using a newly developed ring winding technology, for thermoplastic tape winding or for manufacturing of a flexible modular pressure vessel system, and has contributed to the development of high performance components, e.g. high pressure vessel systems for hydrogen storage. Based on this experience IVW wants to further develop the processing techniques suitable for manufacturing of high performance components. IWV has a strong experience in research projects at national and European level. To name the most relevant for the proposal, IWV is or has been a key partner for STORHY (FP6- IP on Hydrogen storage systems for automotive application), DINAMIT (FP6- STREP on the development and innovation for advanced manufacturing of thermoplastics), GroTherm (National BMBF on Tow placement process for large sized structures using new thermoplastic tape material) and for a national BMWI on TP based pressure vessels for natural gas storage in automotive application.