eHARSH - sensor systems for harsh environments

The aim of the Fraunhofer lighthouse project “eHarsh” is the development of a technology platform intended for the design and manufacturing of sensor systems for the application in extreme harsh environments. Eight Fraunhofer institutes with their respective expertise have joined forces in an interdisciplinary cooperation in order to offer a comprehensive solution that can be applied on a system level.

In the framework of the project, the involved institutes develop and advance a variety of assembly and interconnection technologies and joining processes, which have to sustain specified challenges such as a wide temperature range, shock loading, and vibration loading. Thus, it is an integral part of the project to test these assembly and interconnection technologies regarding their robustness under harsh environmental conditions. Here, the analysis of the sensor systems under combined loads is especially important since new error patterns can occur, which do not exist or are not so distinctive when the sensor systems are examined in isolated tests.

To this end, special test benches, e.g. for the combined testing under temperature and vibration loading, are set up. This allows analyzing simplified sensor systems for the early assessment of different assembly and interconnection technologies and to verify the functionality of the future demonstrator sensor systems.