INNOVATIVE HYBRID MATERIAL CONCEPTS AND THEIR VIRTUAL SAFEGUARDING

New innovative manufacturing technologies allow the production of lightweight structures in multi- material design. By providing a high functional integration the economic mass production becomes feasible, which is needed for their use in car production. However, numerous issues in connection with an efficient and cost-effective series production and assembly of lightweight structures in multi material design are not yet fully solved. This paper covers three publicly funded research projects with participation of inpro. All of them belong to the FOREL-Cluster (research cluster electro-mobility).The projects LEIKA (resource-efficient mixed-material construction for lightweight car bodies), ReLei (manufacturing and recycling strategies for electric mobility for recycling of fibre reinforced lightweight structures in composite hybrid constructions) and SamPa (integral production of hybrid lightweight sandwich structures with particle foam and injection moulding for mass production) cover several aspects concerned with modern hybrid car-body designs. Common to all of them is the development of appropriate simulation strategies followed by virtual safeguarding of the manufacturing process.