ESR10, Martina, had the possibility to test the unloaded shafts provided by Karl Storz Estonia during her previous secondment. The purpose of this secondment was indeed the investigation of the stiffness parameters of such complex devices like endoscopes with the use of MeSOMICS at ITWM Fraunhofer. It was interesting and challenging to do some hands-on work: designing the endoscope samples, how to avoid possible issues which could appear during testing, how to study the contribution of each material on the overall stiffnesses, etc.. This secondment was certainly fundamental for solving one of the main questions of the project and will lead to the end of the mechanical characterization of unloaded shafts.
ESR4, Andrea, learned about geometrically exact Cosserat rods with Kelvin-Voigt type viscous damping and started to implement some examples in the IPS dynamics cable simulation module to investigate inertial and damping effects of fast moving cables. This could provide data to learn the Hamiltonian of mechanical systems like cables and hoses.
ESR 14, Sudhanva, focused on comparing the numerical results on selected benchmarks with that of IPS cable simulation. Additionally, he also had the opportunity to work along with ESR 11 for the comparison of the constitutive relationships for elasto-plastic constitutive laws. Together with their focussed research works, the ESRs had several opportunities to have discussions also with other PhD students at the institute on a wider range of topics and have social interactions. Several social events took place during this period. Visiting the football match of Kaiserslautern vs Dortmund, an evening hike to a nearby hill, bike trips, several dinner and lunch gatherings etc. The ESRs are very happy to have spent time together and are looking forward to visiting again and thankful to Joachim, Vanessa, Davide and many more at ITWM for their warm hospitality and fruitful discussions.
contributed by Andrea Leone (ESR 4), Martina Stavole (ESR 10) and Sudhanva Kusuma Chandrashekhara (ESR 14)