Research area »Technical safety of energetic systems«

In the field of safety investigation, besides basic investigations into the chemical-physical behavior of propellants and explosives under different conditions, we carry out comprehensive and customer-specific risk evaluations and tests

The research group for technical safety is concerned with the safety risks of reactive and explosive substances and processes in systems, processing plants, and devices. The main tasks include safety-related designs, risk evaluations and their experimental validation on laboratory and real scale.

Service portfolio on technical safety

• Safety analysis studies
• Dusts, aerosols, gases, energetic materials
• Release, expansion, combustion, explosion
• Spontaneous combustion phenomena
• Reconstruction of accidents and cases of damage and failure
• Causal and failure analysis
• Risk assessment for processing units, systems, components
• Failure behavior of components, constructive optimization
• Test facilities
• Experiments on laboratory and industrial real scale
• Release, expansion, combustion, explosion
• High and maximum pressure up to 1600bar
• Development, adjustment and adaption of special measuring systems
• H₂- gas concentration measurements - transient and locally-resolved
• Presence of grit and splinters

Beside their application in airbag systems, pyrotechnic gas generators have a wide range of applications in safety and security technology. These include protection against fire and explosions, safety and stabilization on impact, the separation of electrical connections and ballistic protection.

Service portfolio on airbag and protection systems

• Development and characterization of tailored propellants
• Selection of propellant components and thermodynamic performance calculation according to the requirement profile
• Development of suitable processing steps
• Characterization of the reaction properties and service life
• Application-specific development of gas generator systems
• Design of ignition, propellant geometry and combustion chambers
• Testing of individual components and the entire system
• Airbag systems from the ignition through to the complete system
• Characterization of the performance properties, e.g. mass flow
• Failure analysis

Our equipment includes test boxes and facilities for safety investigations relating to detonation, fire and explosion risks and pilot plants for the production of pyrotechnic propellants and for the investigation of safety issues concerning the application of nanoparticles.

• Test boxes and facilities for safety investigations relating to detonation, fire and explosion risks
• Pilot plant for the production of pyrotechnic propellants
• Pilot plant for the safety characterization of nanoparticles
• Explosion and detonation chambers, detonation chamber up to 2kg TNT
• Facility and testing sites approved for fire and explosion tests with safety areas that can be monitored and closed off
• Modified Hartmann-tube
• H₂- high pressure tank 5l / 400bar for emission experiments
• Color, black/white and infrared high-speed cameras
• Background-oriented schlieren method (BOS)
• Chemical analytics
• Highly-transient measurement of physical quantities such as pressure and temperature