Markus Dickerhof

Considerations about the implementation of a public knowledge base regarding nanotechnology

Nanotechnology ranks among the key technologies that will bring fundamental changes to basic research, many industry sectors and daily life. However, consumers often miss reliable and understandable information on nanomaterials. To create this transparency, the DaNa project collects and evaluates the latest scientific literature before publishing these on the website www.nanoobjects.info. Though all published articles are designed to meet the needs of different recipient groups, a certain knowledge about nanomaterials is presumed due to the nanomaterial-specific structuring of the website. This poses a barrier for interested laymen who usually have a particular nano-related application in mind. These application-oriented facts on nanomaterials already exist on the website but are scattered throughout the different articles. To overcome this, we first analyzed the state of the scattered information and then assessed requirements for a new tool displaying these facts: storage of extracted knowledge in a homogenous way, visualization options and integration of the new database into the existing content management system. We therefore extended our backend to capture knowledge on a semantically higher level in a database called DaNaVis. Based on this database we can increase the accessibility of DaNas project results by means of interactive visualization components.

A Cooperation Model and Demand-Oriented ICT Infrastructure for SME Development and Production Networks in the Field of Microsystem Technology

Like no other industry, until today microsystems technology is dominated by a few, large companies covering the whole development and production chain. Besides limitations coming from huge costs for equipment and manufacturing (especially in the field of Si-Microsystem technology) one of the reasons for the weak position of Small Medium Enterprises (SME) in this branch refers to organizational issues, arising from the specific surrounding conditions in this highly interdisciplinary and knowledge intensive field. Especially the smaller SME’s lack of sufficient human resources and an effective management of cross company knowledge about complex Microsystems development to cover all aspects of a complex and parallel product and process development as it is inherent in the one product- one process paradigm of MST.

Acoustic Emission Analysis for Monitoring of Tribological Systems

Today, for the monitoring of hydrodynamic bearings, a multitude of measurement systems is available, of which however none has yet prevailed in practice. A practicable and effective principle to detect first rubbing processes in nonstationary charged sliding contacts is still missing. E. g., a failing bearing in a ship’s engine may lead to the threat of machine, ship and environment as far as to human lives, and certainly to high repairing costs and downtime. Failure-free running machinery demands efficient and reliable monitoring systems which make possible to evaluate the current condition of the bearing arrangement in operation.Copyright

INFOFLOW - a process oriented workflow and information system for micro system development and production

This paper presents a modular, groupware- and workflow based System called INFOFLOW. The system was designed to meet the requirements of a DIN EN ISO 9000 certified development and pre production plant. As a compromise between usage of standard software and a complete custom solution it is partly based on Microsoft Standard Office Software to increase end-users acceptance, supplemented by plugins and a self developed workflow engine. The workflow engine controls the production flow, esp. exception handling and distributes relevant information between the several clients. It especially supports exception handling like activity related, predefined rework sequences, or handling the scrapping of damaged parts. INFOFLOW integrates workflow and information technology providing the users with relevant activity and order related information elements The user interfaces are realized as electronic forms, embedded in Microsofts Outlook Web Access folders, representing the activities or People involved in the production process. These Web applications, called iaelectronic worklistsli are created and distributed by the workflow engine. A mechanism to easily create and integrate user defined input forms allows the customization of the user front ends.

Moulded Interconnect Devices

Moulded Interconnect Devices (MID) refer to free form components made of polymer with added electrical (conductors, isolators, etc.) and mechanical functions (carrier module, housing, etc). MID are being used in various industry sectors like telecommunication (antenna), automotive (motorcycle handlebars), medical (hearing aid) and many others, due to the easiness of integration thanks to the geometry freedom. This chapter discusses, in terms of advantages and main challenges, the main MID materials and technologies, such as Two-shot Injection Moulding, Laser Direct Structuring, Hot Embossing, Aerosol-Jet Printing, and presents an overview of their application sectors.

The SMARTLAM 3D-I Concept: Design of Microsystems from Functional Elements Fabricated by Generative Manufacturing Technologies

Generative manufacturing technologies are gaining more and more of importance as key enabling technologies in future manufacturing, especially when a flexible scalable manufacturing of small medium series of customized parts is required. The paper describes a new approach for design and manufacturing of complex three dimensional components building on a combination of additive manufacturing and e-printing technologies, where the micro component is made up of stacks of functionalized layers of polymer films. Special attention will be paid to the “3-d” modeling approach, requested to support the applicaton developer through provision of design rules for this integrated manufacturing concept . Both, the application concept as well as the related equipment and manufacturing integration currently are currently developed further in the project SMARTLAM, funded by the European Commission.

Search and Graphical Visualization of Concepts in Document Collections Using Taxonomies

The main idea of this paper is the search for semantic concepts in documents using taxonomies. The concepts to discover are represented by general taxonomy trees which can be combined to express more sophisticated concepts. The proposed algorithm allows the ranking of documents according to the relevance of the queried concepts as well as a graphical representation of the detected concepts inside a document based on a quantified version of the taxonomy trees.

Towards an European Approach for Characterisation of Multimaterial Micromanufacturing Process Capabilities

The paper describes a comprehensive approach for the modelling and description of technologies available within a European Research Infrastructure consisting of distributed research infrastructures all over Europe. The resulting knowledge management system integrates the partial approaches of several European research activities in this area to a comprehensive description format for technical capabilities as well as maturity and economic aspects.

Condition-Monitoring Based on Structure-borne Ultrasound Analysis

Recent results in condition monitoring of machine elements by acoustic emission analysis are presented. A special method based on the evaluation of structure-borne noise emissions in the ultrasonic range is described. The ultrasound-signals caused by friction processes are captured by a broadband piezoelectric sensor and analyzed subsequently. The method has proven to be suitable for detecting the occurrence of friction between solid objects in a very reliable way. This leads to a variety of possible applications wherever occurrence of solid body friction has to be considered as an indication of failure or wear. In addition to tribometer tests, experiments with sliding bearings and slide ring seals are presented exemplarily. In both cases promising results were achieved. The significant difference of the presented method compared to other sound-based methods is in the nature of the analyzed signals: Harmonic waves of audible sounds or percussion-type stimulations are not evaluated but the portion of friction sounds emerging in the ultra-sonic range beyond audible frequencies. These friction sounds are widely unaffected by ambient noise and other sources of interference.Copyright