Polymers and polymer-based composites are perfect materials to address societal challenges in all areas, e.g. health, food safety, clean energy, transport, etc., along the entire material & product cycle. The Department of Plastics Engineering therefore also focuses its research activities on finding targeted solutions for these challenges and thus also supporting industry. A large part of the industry active in this field are SMEs and the stimulation of innovations through the transfer of the latest research results from science to industry is an important goal. The aim is always to combine fundamental research with application-oriented understanding.
Thematically, research focuses on five main areas: elastomers, additive manufacturing, smart manufacturing, lightweight construction and sustainability. And it is precisely this focus that is reflected in the articles on the following pages: they offer an insight into the wide-ranging research activities of the last two years; in numerous individual projects, central questions were addressed and innovative approaches to solutions were generated.