About the contest

MT Aerospace is an internationally highly respected company in the aerospace industry. As a part of the listed European aerospace group OHB SE (Prime Standard, ISIN: DE0005936124) the company is developing and producing essential components for the ARIANE launcher system, the Airbus fleet, spaceships and satellites. MT Aerospace is a technological leader in lightweight construction of metals and composites as well as the largest supplier of the ARIANE program outside France with a workshare of around 10 percent.

The weight-optimized design and manufacturing of components is a prerequisite in the aerospace industry as lightweight construction is one of the most important requirements. At the same time, components also need to withstand high mechanical loads. This combination of requirements presents the engineers with great challenges. Carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) was therefore chosen as the material for the development of the solid fuel boosters.

To build these components, MT Aerospace uses a vacuum-infusion method. In this process, a dry fiber preform is built through wrapping and layering carbon fibers, which afterward gets infused with epoxy resin through a vacuum.

Dry preforming and subsequent vacuum infusion offer the benefit of separately processing the fibers and the resin. This offers the possibility to intersect the process at any time and allows to align the carbon fibers in any possible configuration. Components can therefore be post-processed before infusing the resin.

In the scope of this contest, we are looking for additional components and use cases where this unique production process – dry carbon wrapping with subsequent vacuum infusion - can be utilized.

The components should therefore fulfill the following requirements: They should be large and subjects to high forces. The special benefit of this construction method is also the light weight of the components built. Therefore your focus should be on components or products where weight plays a crucial role. These components don’t currently need to be made of carbon fiber. To allow production with the dry carbon wrapping with subsequent vacuum infusion the components cannot be of a high complexity.

The following leading questions may help you to develop your ideas:

• Which components can be built using dry carbon wrapping with subsequent vacuum infusion?
• Which components would profit from using dry carbon wrapping with subsequent vacuum infusion in the production process?
• Which components or products need to be lightweight but also very stable at the same time?
• What other industries and branches could benefit from this technology?

To participate in the contest and to submit your ideas, please follow the process below:

1. Register on the HYVE Crowd

2. Get informed about the topic. Information can be found on this page as well as on the page containing the background information

3. Develop your idea!

4. Phrase your idea: Use this mask to submit your idea. Give it a title, describe it, attach additional files (optional) and set tags so other users can better find your idea (optional)

5. Submit your idea!

6. Answer questions about your idea and develop it further!

Important dates of the contest

Start of the contest: 19^th of October 2016

End of the submission phase: 14^th of December 2016

Jury meeting: March

Winner announcement: March

Evaluation

As a registered member of the HYVE Crowd you can evaluate ideas according to the following criteria:

• Depth – How detailed is the elaboration of the idea?
• Degree of innovation – How new and innovative is the idea?
• Market potential – Does the idea have the potential to serve a large market?
• Functionality – Does the idea offer newness or an advancement of the functionality?

In addition to the community, there will also be experts from MT Aerospace on the platform who will evaluate the ideas. You can identify the experts by the banner in their profile. The experts will use their technical expertise to also evaluate the ideas based on three additional criteria:

• Feasibility – Can the idea be implemented with the existing technology? (see background information)
• Efficiency – Does the technology offer an advantage in the usage or production of the component or product?
• Wow-Effect – Is this idea unique?

The average community rating of an idea will be displayed in the idea pool. They will also be included as a measure in the section process for choosing the winning ideas. The winners will be selected by the following jury. The prizes for the winning ideas can be found on the following page.