VDMA Textile Machinery: Graduate engineers stand out and take off

Event & Conferences

VDMA Textile Machinery: Graduate engineers stand out and take off

In connection with its members’ meeting in Lindau on Lake Constance the VDMA Textile Machinery Association has honoured seven successful young engineers.

Every year the Walter Reiners-Stiftung (foundation) of the German textile machinery industry launches several promotion and creativity prizes for young engineers. This time, there has been a particular highlight: As a recognition for outstanding dissertations, master thesis and project studies the President of the Foundation and chairman of the Lindauer DORNIER GmbH Board of Management, Peter D. Dornier, has invited the laureates to a Zeppelin flight over the lake Constance region.

The award ceremony took place at the Dornier Aviation & Aerospace Museum in Friedrichshafen. This museum, which is an inspiring celebration of the pioneer spirit and makes it possible to experience highest technical performance, was the ideal framework to honour the forward-looking studies of the young academics.

In his celebratory speech Peter D. Dornier characterized the textile machinery industry as real “high-tech incubator”, which contributes in a decisive manner to meet the challenges of automotive engineering and medical technology and provides convincing answers exceeding the classical fields of application such as apparel and home textiles.

Award winners of 2014

The promotion prize in the dissertation category endowed with 5,000 Euros has been awarded to Dr. Thorsten Heinze of TU Chemnitz (technical university). He undertook further research on polyester fibers as alternative to braided metallic ropes used for conveyor technology. Fields of application are elevators, cranes and shaft hoisting systems.

Due to the excellent quality of two master theses this year, the promotion prizes in this category, each endowed with 3,000 Euros, have been given to Moniruddoza Ashir of TU Dresden (technical university) and Markus Appelmann of Hochschule Mannheim (university of applied sciences). The study presented by Mr. Ashir deals with hybrid woven structures for lightweight applications, which can be used from automotive engineering to sports equipment like tennis rackets or golf clubs. The master thesis of Appelmann with a very practical approach is devoted to the development of a bench for testing the loop formation on warp knitting machines.

A team of students of RWTH Aachen (technical university) has been honoured with the creativity award of 2,000 Euros. Dominik Granich, Gerrit Hartmann, Andreas Schulz und Philipp Schleer presented a concept for development of a braiding machine for stents. These are applied in medicine for treating vascular diseases.