More and more optical 3d deformation measurement systems are used to analyse material and component behaviour. Obvious advantages in the analyses - especially at high strain deformation states, where nonlinearity caused by material behaviour and kinematics, anisotropy or inhomogeneity plays a role - are pushing these methods. Nevertheless DIC-based systems only serve to observe surfaces of specimens or components. For the determination of a full 3d deformation state, there is a need of information about a material point behind the observed surface. Due to this fact it is only possible to get either deformation states relative to a local coordinate system of a surface element, or to determine the full 3d deformation state relative to a global coordinate system by making assumptions in thickness direction. The aim of this paper is to give a general view of how deformation states can be evaluated based on raw point coordinates.

The usage of full-field deformation data from experiments for the identification of material parameters is a topic of current research. The continuous improvement of optical measurement systems leads to promising results in parameter identification and optimization. With the high amount of data points the displacement and deformation field is not only a mean value but can be resolved locally which leads to a higher accuracy of the identified parameters.
The goal of this research is to get reliable results from the full-field measurement data through a Finite Element Model Updating Method with a lower amount of experiments compared to taking the yield values and Lankford coefficients for the characterization of the yield surface of sheet steel.

In the last ten years elastomers were more frequently used in complex technical fields which require high performance. Therefore it is very important to have an instrument to estimate the service life of these technical parts. At the moment there are two classical methods for service life prediction. Both are more or less adapted from metal parts engineering.
Fracture mechanics uses the characteristic values of dynamic crack propagation experiments to calculate the load cycles to failure for different load amplitudes. The other method, based on the concept of Wöhler, measures the lifetime of a sample for different load amplitudes (fatigue to failure tests, s-n curves). Both are useful for specific applications. But for rubber materials they can lead to different results for the same material. In this work an approach is shown to combine the two classical methods and an attempt is made to explain the different results. A new concept for lifetime prediction will be presented.

The paper presents the evaluation of the pedestrian safety, during a collision with a road vehicle with the high bonnet leading edge. A Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) was chosen to investigate the influence of vehicle front design on the pedestrian lower extremity injuries. The Finite Element Method (FEM) was utilized in order to reduce the costs and time needed to carry out a pedestrian-to-car front aggressiveness test. The virtual tests carried out by means of the numerical, certified Finite Element (FE) lower leg impactor were further contrasted with the results of the multibody (MB) simulation. While the FE impactor gives in-depth data about leg fractures and knee joint injuries, further MB simulations present the complete, post-impact pedestrian kinematics. Finally, the critical points in SUV design, in terms of pedestrian passive safety enhancement, were indicated.

Turbogenerator rotors are a typical example of large components experiencing low cycle fatigue (LCF). Every machine switch-on and switch off corresponds to a LCF cycle, for a total amount of 10,000-15,000 cycles in the whole machine life. In, an experimental study was presented, concerning the characterization of two materials for rotor and coil retaining ring (CRR) manufacturing.
The design task of rotors and CRRs involves serious safety issues: incidents caused by unexpected failures may lead to rotor explosion with catastrophic effects. For this reason, the structural analysis must be integrated by the estimation of the probability of failure in the machine life stages, to be fulfilled by a suitable probabilistic method. However, there are very few papers in literature, tackling this issue. The object of this paper is to show a suitable methodology to quantify the safety of a rotor, starting by the knowledge of LCF experimental data and of the nominal loads on the shrink-fit coupling with the CRR.