From the Sector

The Board of Directors of Autoneum Holding Ltd appoints Bernhard Wiehl, the longstanding Head of Finance & Controlling of Business Group Europe, as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and member of the Group Executive Board with immediate effect. The previous CFO Dr Martin Zwyssig has decided to leave Autoneum.

Bernhard Wiehl has been responsible for Finance & Controlling at Business Group Europe since 2013. Also thanks to his financial leadership, this Business Group with its numerous legal units has become highly profitable in recent years. Prior to joining Autoneum, he held senior finance and controlling positions with various automotive suppliers and has therefore extensive experience in the financial management of internationally active suppliers. Additionally, he is very familiar with the challenges of the automotive industry in a global environment. From 2007 to 2013, he was Head of Finance & Controlling and member of the Executive Board of the Lighting and Electronics division at the German automotive supplier Hella and from 2004 to 2007, among other things, in charge of controlling of the Europedivision of the supplier Hydraulik-Ring. Wiehl started his professional career in 1995 at TRW Automotive in Germany. He studied mechanical and industrial engineering at the Esslingen University of Applied Sciences, Germany, and holds a degree in industrial engineering (FH).

Bernhard Wiehl’s predecessor Dr Martin Zwyssig decided to leave the Company and to take up a new professional challenge. The Board of Directors and CEO Matthias Holzammer thank him for the commitment to the Company and wish him all the best for his professional and private future.

• Operations, Product Development, Sales and Technical Support Growth

Celine Huang 黄秀蔚 is named Chief Executive Officer for HeiQ Greater China and Ming Wen Liang 梁銘文is named Chief Executive Officer HeiQ Taiwan. Huang, with her background as a general manager of a large player in the same industry brings a total of over 20 years of solid testing lab, agent and country strategies management expertise with an excellent relationship skills with customers, distributors, dealers and end users. She has a chemical engineering degree in dyeing and finishing from China Textile University. Huang has worked in both Australia and China in senior management positions. Huang will lead the group’s Greater China business from the newly created Shanghai office (瑞士海屹科新材料有限公司上海办事处).

Liang will manage mill relations, technical support and distribution at HeiQ Taiwan. She brings close to 20 years of experience in textile and garment production supply chain focusing on sales, material innovation and development, sourcing and production. Liang holds a Bachelor of International Trade from the National Taipei University of Business, Taiwan, speaks Chinese, English and Spanish and has lived in both Taiwan and Argentina. And will be based in the new office in Taipei (瑞士海屹科有限公司).

HeiQ continues to increase its global footprint with the creation of HeiQ Shanghai and HeiQ Taiwan. In addition to HeiQ Hong Kong, these offices aim to provide dedicated technical support in the Greater China area, further broaden its geographical reach in strategic locations and support HeiQ’s brand partners’ manufacturing activities in the region.

The Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) has awarded two prizes to graduates of the Institut für Textiltechnik (ITA) of RWTH Aachen University - the dissertation prize and the creativity prize of the Walter Reiners Foundation of German Textile Machinery 2018. ITA alumnus Dr Benjamin Weise was awarded the dissertation prize for the development of novel fibres for textile charge storage devices. For their work on a guide to 4D product design, Jan Merlin Abram and Aalon Tal (both ITA students) were honoured with the creativity prize. The dissertation prize is endowed with €5,000 whilst the creativity prize contains a one-year scholarship of €250 per month. Peter D. Dornier, President of the Walter Reiners Foundation and Chairman of the Management Board of Lindauer DORNIER, presented the awards on the 18 September 2018 at the 18th Textile Machinery Forum in the Digital Capability Center in Aachen, Germany.

Graphene revolutionizes all-in-one - supercaps, reduction of terahertz radiation and antistatics

In his dissertation "Development of graphene-modified multifilament yarns for the production of textile charge storage devices", laureate Dr Benjamin Weise developed novel fibres made of polyamide and graphene and further processed them into textile surfaces. The newly developed polyamide graphene fibres are featuring a multitude of advantages:

• Due to their high performance in the charge storage area, they are predestined for use in double-layer capacitors, so-called super capacitors, or supercaps in short. Compared to lithium-ion batteries, supercaps offer significantly higher power density and a longer lifetime as no chemical reactions are taking place. towing to the graphene platelets in the filaments, it is now possible for the first time to integrate a charge storage device directly into a textile without having to sew in a rechargeable battery. This new fibre is therefore suitable for prospective use in smart textiles, for instance in a textile defibrillator.
• The new graphene-modified polyamide fibres can attenuate inident terahertz radiation up to 25 % of their original intensity. Terahertz radiation, for example, offers transmission rates of 100 Mbit/sec and is therefore of high interest for high-performance wireless communication. However, the radiation could damage sensible electronics as in aircrafts if this technology will be used widespread. Consequently, the shielding of the radiation is of high importance, e.g. in the form of fibre composite components in the aircraft, which protect the on-board electronics.
• As the fibres are showcasing a dissipative electrical conductivity, personal protective equipment is another prospective field of application.  

The development of a pilot process for graphene-modified fibres and the production of textile demonstrators are novel and disruptive attainments of Dr Weise’s PhD thesis and the reason for the award ceremony to him. Due to its outstanding properties, the European Union is funding research on graphene within the frame of the "Graphene Flagship" with an overall budget of one billion Euro (source: http://graphene-flagship.eu/project/Pages/About-Graphene-Flagship.aspx).

Modular product design of 4D products is now possible in simplified form

How can three-dimensional products change their shape over time and thus become "four-dimensional"? The students Jan Merlin Abram and Aalon Tal provide answers to this question in their project work "Leitfaden zur Auslegung hybrider morphender Textilien am Beispiel eines Scharniers" (Guidelines for the Design of Hybrid Morphing Textiles Using the Example of a Hinge), for which they were awarded the creativity prize. In their work, the students offer a guideline for the development of a four-dimensional textile from the idea to the demonstrator. Four-dimensional textiles, for example, consist of a hybrid material of elastic textile on which three-dimensional structures are printed. The fourth dimension describes the change in shape and/or a property over a defined period of time (= morphing).  This change is caused by external influences such as light and heat.

Every year, the Foundation of the German Textile Machinery awards prizes for the best dissertation, diploma or master's thesis and the creativity prize for the smartest student research project. Further prizes were awarded to Eric Otto, ITM Dresden, and Susanne Fischer, Reutlingen University.