The team of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 805 is pleased and grateful for the support of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG) for the funding it will provide for our research projects in the forthcoming years.

By controlling uncertainties, we will be able to minimize safety factors between load-carrying capacity and actual loads, avoid the current oversizing, conserve resources, extend areas of application and hence improve profitability. To this end, uncertainties will be described in process models and evaluated, so that they can eventually be controlled with the help of new methods and technologies to be developed. The innovative potential inherent in the control of uncertainty extends to a large spectrum of load-carrying and safety-relevant components and systems, for example travelling gears in the aeronautical and automotive sectors, bicycles, truck-mounted cranes and numerous other applications.

The research program is supported by scientific key themes in product development, in process development in production, and in process development in use by eight Professors of Technische Universität Darmstadt Mr. Abele (Production Engineering and Cutting Machine Tools), Mr. Anderl (Computer Integrated Design), Mr. Birkhofer (Product development and Machine Elements), Mr. Groche (Production Engineering and Forming Machines), Mr. Hanselka (System Reliability and Machine Acoustics), Mr. Martin (Mathematical Optimization), Mr. Pelz (Fluid Systems Technology) and Mr. Ulbrich (Mathematical Optimization).

The spokesman of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 805 is Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Hanselka.