Electric Hydrostatic Actuation - modular building blocks for industrial applications

Electro Hydrostatic Actuators (EHA) are emerging as a viable option for industrial machine builders as the design combines the best of both electro-mechanical and electro-hydraulic technologies. The EHA is a highly integrated, compact alternative to traditional hydraulic solutions. Automation engineers moving toward electro-mechanical actuation in pursuit of energy efficiency and environmental cleanliness, will find an EHA an attractive option for high force density actuators. This paper will address the factors to consider when assessing an industrial machine’s application suitability for this latest innovation in actuation. It describes principal base circuits, a concept for EHA building blocks and a realized pilot application as well as challenges on actuator and components level

Challenges and opportunities of the European Critical Raw Materials Act

Abstract The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) is an essential regulatory framework designed to address the pressing challenges faced by the European Union (EU) in the strategic sectors of decarbonization, digitalization, and aerospace and defense. It aims to tackle the lack of secure and sustainable access to critical raw materials (CRMs) by increasing anticipation and mitigation of supply risks, fostering domestic CRM potential, and promoting sustainable sourcing practices. Part of a broader “Green Industrial Plan” and aligned with the “Net-Zero Industry Act” (NZIA), the CRMA strives to position the EU as a leading hub for clean tech industries. The NZIA and CRMA packages respond to international trends of protecting clean energy technology and resources, akin to the US Inflation Reduction Act. Defining materials as “strategic” based on their relevance and expected demand for strategic technologies, the CRMA regulation establishes benchmarks for minimum shares of EU demand to be covered by domestically sourced and processed as well as recycled raw materials and aims at reducing dependencies on single third country suppliers in all steps of the supply chain. A communication complements the regulation by focusing on increasing CRM supply security and sustainability through circularity, standardization efforts, skill development, and strategic actions for research and innovation. Establishing a “CRM Club” and partnerships with like-minded countries intend to strengthen international partnerships to safeguard CRM supply security and facilitate sustainable investment in resource-rich nations. Challenges arise concerning the concept of “strategic raw materials” and meeting benchmarks, particularly in materials availability, recycling targets, diversification, and the establishment of necessary skills. Data gaps, potential national differences, coherence with national legislation, long-term economic viability, and potential fuelling of international tensions also pose significant challenges to the effective implementation of the CRMA. Addressing these challenges and embracing the opportunities presented by the CRMA are crucial steps toward achieving sustainable resource management and advancing the EU’s clean tech industries

Fabrication of multifunctional titanium surfaces by producing hierarchical surface patterns using laser based ablation methods

Textured implant surfaces with micrometer and sub-micrometer features can improve contact properties like cell adhesion and bacteria repellency. A critical point of these surfaces is their mechanical stability during implantation. Therefore, strategies capable to provide both biocompatibility for an improved implant healing and resistance to wear for protecting the functional surface are required. In this work, laser-based fabrication methods have been used to produce hierarchical patterns on titanium surfaces. Using Direct Laser Writing with a nanosecond pulsed laser, crater-like structures with a separation distance of 50 µm are produced on unpolished titanium surfaces. Directly on this texture, a hole-like pattern with 5 µm spatial period is generated using Direct Laser Interference Patterning with picosecond pulses. While the smaller features should reduce the bacterial adhesion, the larger geometry was designed to protect the smaller features from wear. On the multifunctional surface, the adherence of E. Coli bacteria is reduced by 30% compared to the untreated reference. In addition, wear test performed on the multiple-scale patterns demonstrated the possibility to protect the smaller features by the larger craters. Also, the influence of the laser treatment on the growth of a titanium oxide layer was evaluated using Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy analysis. © 2019, The Author(s)

How sustainability can get a competitive advantage: state of the art for stationary battery storage systems

Stationary battery storage systems are becoming a critical energy infrastructure around the world. Therefore, responsible handling of battery materials is a fundamental precondition to avoid future social, environmental, and political conflicts. Global battery regulations support sustainable batteries to drive new business models on reuse, remanufacturing and recycling. With strict environmental market entry barriers, the EU will set minimum sustainability standards with the new EU-Battery Directive. The US Inflation Reduction Act provides financial incentives for a scale-up of the domestic battery industry. A hotspot analysis for the residential storage system VARTA.wall shows that a combination of reuse and recycling strategies can reduce the climate change impact by up to 45% and mineral resource use by up to 50% compared to initial battery designs. However, specific sustainability criteria and manufacturer-independent standards need to be set up by politics and industry organizations to bring the necessary technical and logistic infrastructure to the market. The challenge is to set up sustainability criteria strict enough to ensure responsible material handling but still allow cost-effective, practical solutions as well as affordable battery standards. Therefore, our analysis shows the limits of current and the need for future regulations to shift market incentives to sustainable batteries and their infrastructure

Hardware dependencies of GPU-accelerated beamformer performances for microwave breast cancer detection

UWB microwave imaging has proven to be a promising technique for early-stage breast cancer detection. The extensive image reconstruction time can be accelerated by parallelizing the execution of the underlying beamforming algorithms. However, the efficiency of the parallelization will most likely depend on the grade of parallelism of the imaging algorithm and of the utilized hardware. This paper investigates the dependencies of two different beamforming algorithms on multiple hardware specification of several graphics boards. The parallel implementation is realized by using NVIDIA’s CUDA. Three conclusions are drawn about the behavior of the parallel implementation and how to efficiently use the accessible hardware