PILOT - Endowed Professorship for Aviation

The civil aircraft industry is in a phase of steady growth, as can be seen by actual sales numbers and prognoses of major aircraft producers. In order to be competitive in science and business on the long term and to benefit from that positive trend, TU Graz together with Austrian industrial partners aims to research innovative solutions in the field of aviation. For the development of aircraft components special focus is put on the linking of materials science and production technologies. This research environment at the university facilitates a central pooling of forces and resources in the field of aviation by using synergy effects. This will lay the ground to master the challenges in this field of research over the next years. The endowed professorship Innovative Materials and Production Technologies with Focus Aviation will be positioned at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Economic Sciences at the Institute of Materials Science and Welding with strong connections to the Institutes of Production Engineering and Vehicle Safety. The co-financing industrial partners cover the entire supply-chain from materials producer to manufacturer of semi-finished products, parts, and components, up to the aircraft producer. This content-related positioning at TU Graz together with the availability of industrial partners along the process chain opens a large number of innovative research areas. Examples of which are the development of special materials suitable for production, high-performance milling of titanium and CFRP or designing of inspection systems for joined aircraft components. The main goal is the establishment of the endowed professorship at TU Graz as a competence center for scientific questions in the field of materials and production technologies along the process chain in the aircraft industry in Austria. This target should be reached using a unique, holistic approach of developing innovative materials and production technologies for aircraft components at a central professorship. The focus is put on fundamental research topics with medium to long-term application potential.