Structural Durability: Methods and Concepts

Introduction & Motivation | Durability management.- Load time histories and counting methods.- Load and stress spectra S/N curves and their characterization.- Damage accumulation and fatigue life assessment.- Fatigue strength of materials and components.- Improving fatigue strength.- Accelerated life testing and math modeling.

Ruediger Heim is a mechanical engineer who has been involved in road vehicle product development and research since 1992. He graduated from Technical University Darmstadt, having his focus on material science and automotive engineering. Before he joined Fraunhofer LBF, he was working many years for an engineering service supplier at sites in Cologne, Stuttgart and Ruesselsheim, supporting automotive body engineering programs. The attributes he was working on, were primarily crashworthiness and structural durability.

Beyond traditional approaches for body engineering, he was introducing novel solutions such as rigid polyurethane foam to stiffen relevant cavities of the body structure. In 2005 he joined Europe's largest organization for applied research: the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. At the Fraunhofer-Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability in Darmstadt he is now in charge of an R&D division as well as he is deputy director of the institute since 2014. Parallelto his focus on structural durability, he is strongly involved in R&D activities related to low & zero emission vehicles. At the University for applied Science in Kaiserslautern he is giving a lecture in "structural durability" for an international master´s study program.