The Industrievereinigung Verstärkte Kunststoffe e.V. (AVK) announced the winners of its annual innovation awards at the JEC Forum DACH in Augsburg on 29th of November 2022. In the category "Research and Science", the Chair of Carbon Composites presented the innovation of a "manufacturing process for conformable pressure vessels with tension struts" developed within the project Polymers4Hydrogen and won the third place.

Fuel cell electric vehicles are currently expensive for end customers due to their low market maturity. One approach to reduce costs is to use common vehicle architectures for hydrogen- and battery-powered vehicles, resulting in a flat, cuboidal installation space for the hydrogen storage system. Since prismatic structures are subjected to bending stresses under internal pressure, tension struts are integrated inside the tank volume. The connection of the struts to the tank wall is crucial, as this is where the forces counteracting the internal pressure are introduced. The innovative process consisting of four main steps offers the possibility of manufacturing a CFRP-tank with integrated thermoplastic CFRP tension struts using established technologies such as the winding process, additive manufacturing or the skeleton construction method. Since the re-shaped strut ends are anchored in different layers of the CFRP laminate, a fiber-optimized load transfer can be achieved. More detailed information on this year's award winners can be found here.