All posts by Nico Manger

About Nico Manger

Mehr zu den Autoren…

Collision protection and self-healing structures: Lightweight design ideas to mitigate the consequence of collision

While the future of lightweight design provides fodder for strategy debates, more and more innovations in carbon fibre reinforced plastic components are making headlines. This results, for example, in automotive engineers saying good-bye to the ‘simple bonnet plate. From research into textiles comes a proposal for an improved pedestrian collision protector in the form of ... Read more...

Lightweight design innovations for motor vehicle manufacture

While some people enthuse about the ‘steel of the 21st century’, others warn against expecting too much from the use of carbon fibre materials in large-scale motor vehicle production for reasons of technology and cost. While proponents provide proof of feasibility with automotive bodies manufactured entirely from carbon fibre reinforced plastic and / or individual ... Read more...

Smart Textiles in the context of energy products

Smart Textiles have sometimes been reduced to functional apparel fabrics. But we also find them as energy saving fabric in tent roofs, as threads with piezo energy properties to generate very small amounts of energy or as heat conducting fibres in heated coatings for wind turbine rotor blades. Let us look at three interesting innovations ... Read more...

Technical textiles from cellar to roof

It is not a surprise that the use of technical textile products in the building sector is continuously increasing. According to requirements textile materials can be used from cellar to roof in line with standards and building regulations. The range of applications includes everything from spectacular architectural solutions for building structures to new armouring options ... Read more...

Car interiors of tomorrow: Part 2

Yesterday, we talked about possible future scenarios for car cockpits. Today, let us elaborate on that. More than ten textile and leather research institutes are currently dealing with ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ textiles in combination with fibre-based lightweight composites. These also include, amongst others, Techtextil exhibitors such as The Textile Research Institute Thuringia-Vogtland (Textilforschungsinstitut Thüringen-Vogtland – ... Read more...

Car interiors of tomorrow: lighter, brighter, more functional.

Today and tomorrow, we will look at ‘high tex’ materials for seats, headlinings and panels. It is not only in the electric cars of tomorrow that the interiors are set to become feel-good zones with a host of different innovative features. Designers now have, at their disposal, new kinds of textiles and fibre-based lightweight composites ... Read more...

Focus on lightweight textiles

Today, it is all about lightweight structures for building facades and shell structures. Industry has been using fibre reinforcement for quite some time especially in motor vehicle construction or in the sports sector. The added possibility of using carbon fibres in particular for the manufacture of extremely filigree concrete structures in the construction industry is ... Read more...