Case Studies and Customer Refer­ences

RedWave Technologies builds products to protect communities and countries from accidental and intentional chemical threats. The handheld and portable FTIR spectrometers from RedWave with integrated pyroelectric detectors from InfraTec are used to identify unknown chemicals by safety professionals and emergency response personnel. Unknown chemical spills and releases can come from transportation accidents, industrial accidents, residential and industrial fires, or other catastrophic events.

Vyaire Medical develops devices for the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of respiratory diseases. Alongside our other products, we can provide a spiroergometric system for lung function diagnostics, such as the VyntusTM CPX. Integrated into the VyntusTM CPX is the pyroelectric detector LMM-242 from InfraTec.

Since 2007, the eralytics company has been developing and manufacturing analytical instruments for quality control in the mineral oil as well as the flavor and fragrance industry. One of the multi-fuel analyzers is ERASPEC. It allows the measurement of different properties of fuels. ERASPEC is equipped with a pyroelectric detector from InfraTec - the special detector LIE-312.

The INFICON company develops and produces, among other things, gas detection and concentration measurement devices. The IRwin® portable natural gas detector is one of them. A product for use in gas pipelines leak detection survey, commissioning and emergency, as well as for Landfill Surface Emission Monitoring. On board: a pyroelectric detector from InfraTec.

Qingdao Laoying Haina Group uses infrared detectors to equip its self-developed devices for environmental gas analysis.

Studying plants to improve crop performance and yield. The global population is growing and current crop yield is not keeping up with this pace of growth.

Half of the world‘s population is infected with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. Thanks to Beijing Richen-Force Science & Technology, Helicobacter pylori can now be reliably detected.

Alcohol is the most frequent cause of death in road traffic accidents and 20% of work-related accidents are caused by alcohol. According to the WHO, about three million people die worldwide each year from alcohol consumption – that is more than from AIDS, violence and road accidents combined.

Diseases such as chickenpox and acne leave scars that can affect a person for a lifetime. Thanks to dermatological lasers, these can be removed gently and safely without anaesthesia or just with local anaesthetic, even from the face.

Cannabis serves as a basis for oils, fragrances, clothing, intoxicants – and as a medicine. Already several thousand years ago the Chinese used it as a remedy against rheumatism. Nowadays, researchers worldwide are again dealing with the medical use of the plant. Infrared sensors provide answers to the question of which type contains which active ingredients.

„Please strip to the waist.“ Medical examinations still frequently begin with this sentence. Still. This sentence could very soon be: „Please breathe out strongly.“ For research in the field of respiratory gas measurement systems are making considerable progress. The aim is clear: To make the diagnosis of illnesses easier and painless.

What does your breakfast egg from the weekend, a cornfield and a large portion of french fries from a fast-food restaurant have in common? They all provide raw materials for a biogas plant. Organic substances such as egg shells, corn or potato peelings are decomposed there naturally under airtight sealing. The result is an energy-rich and extremely versatile product – biogas.

Building thermography is a popular and established application for thermal cameras. Today the related services are frequently provided with simple “pistol” style cameras and from low-cost service providers. But when it comes to perform precision thermography you definitely need serious equipment and professional users!

A core topic of modern materials research is the research on plastics as a versatile material for various technological applications. Quite often, industrial applications are developed from academic basic research.

At the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Paderborn, Kunststofftechnik Paderborn (KTP) works intensively on this topic using a VarioCAM® HD for this purpose.

Today, thermographic damage and function analysis of electronic components is an established test method in electrical engineering. This method is also used for research purposes at the Institute for Electrical Systems and Energy Logistics at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. In this context, Prof. Dr. Ralph Schacht is intensively involved with the material and system characterisation as well as the non-destructive failure analysis of printed circuit boards, electronic components, microelectronics as well as composite systems of packaging and interconnection technology.

Environmental conditions today often tend towards extremes. Many areas are very humid and wet, while others are predominantly dry. Particularly in the second case, cultivating raw materials such as grain, beet or maize is a challenge. A challenge that KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA is facing. As part of its plant research, the company uses the VarioCAM® HD head 900 infrared camera from InfraTec to analyse the behaviour of plants during drought stress and pest infestation.

Wildfires are a permanent threat for several regions around the world – and the global climate change is adding to the number and severity of these events. Fighting them is a huge challenge, strong winds, heat and inaccessibility make it even more difficult and dangerous for those who risk their life to protect others. One approach to tackle wildfires is the usage of airborne fire mapping.

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) offer a wide range of possible applications in the field of nanotechnology. Everyday examples are the position recognition of mobile phones and the use in airbags, digital cameras or pacemakers. Other applications can be found above all in the field of miniaturised medical diagnostics. Growing demands on miniaturisation affect both the system solutions required for this and the sensors and control elements to be developed.

The energy efficiency of electronic components is becoming increasingly important in numerous fields of application. And that is not all: in our electronic and high-tech age, the demand is for even faster active components, higher power densities of miniaturised systems as well as absolute reliability. Along with this, there is the request for environmentally conscious resource procurement and the requirement that the increase in performance of modules should run parallel to lower energy consumption.

Wood pellets as an alternative and high-quality fuel have become increasingly important in recent years. Their local origin from sustainable cultivation in the region has given WUN Bioenergie GmbH the opportunity to respond to market demand as an environmentally friendly supplier of raw materials. However, like other fuels, stored wood pellets need to be secured and monitored around the clock to prevent causes of devastating damage in the event of a fire, for example. Robust and reliable thermography solutions are a suitable tool for plant protection here.

The Amager Resource Center (ARC) is a waste incinerator like no other. From the roof of the Waste to Energy facility, skiers and snowboarders wind their way down on green plastic mats from a height of about 80 meters, even in the summer. The city hall of the Danish capital, Copenhagen, is just five kilometres away. The location, which is almost in the heart of a European capital, as well as its use as a public leisure centre, shows how much confidence operators place in the safety of the ARC. An important component in the security concept is the WASTE-SCAN infrared monitoring system for early fire detection by InfraTec.

Anyone who wants to produce curved or twisted steel and aluminium components, can rely on bending forging nowadays. Components with complex geometries can now be manufactured by means of this incremental forging variant.

Many tons of waste are bunkered and processed every day in waste recycling plants. It is not uncommon for this to contain highly flammable materials. If ignition sources get into this storage area, for example during delivery, there is an acute risk of fire. Therefore, waste incineration plants are subject to the strictest fire protection requirements in order to prevent endangering the environment and local residents. For this reason, an extremely important preventive measure is the permanent monitoring of the waste bunker and, if necessary, the surrounding areas.

Epoxy resin systems are mostly used as a matrix material in fibre composites. In a variety of manufacturing processes, the corresponding resin system is processed in a flowable state. The material only acquires its rigidity in a subsequent curing process. This is characterized by an exothermic chemical reaction with a pronounced temperature dependence.

Technical systems and devices are often subject to the influence of thermal energy or heat up due to internal processes. Their efficiency and service life can be increased, for example, by optimised thermal management. The installed active components are usually optimised extensively for this purpose. Passive components, on the other hand, are often neglected in this respect.

New materials with precisely controlled optical and thermal transport characteristics can make a large contribution to resource-saving thermal management. Scientists of the University of Bayreuth are pursuing this vision. They use infrared thermography to quantitatively determine thermal conductivity in nano- and mesostructured polymer materials.

As part of the 3dStahl collaborative project, a 6-axis robot, equipped with a welding machine, was attached upside down to a wall-to-wall wire rope hoist kinematics system in order to automate joining processes involving small quantities or even individual parts such as large-scale objects (lock gates, bridges).

District heating is generally regarded as an extremely efficient and environmentally friendly form of energy supply. Based on industrial waste heat or renewable energy sources, it offers the possibility of heating water and thus supplying private, commercial and industrial customers. Netze Duisburg GmbH is doing to control the city's entire district heating network supported by InfraTec infrared cameras.

Lasers are extremely versatile tools in industry and manufacturing technology. Due to their flexibility, they serve as a key technology for implementing the goals of industry 4.0. Although laser cutting and welding are nowadays regarded as turnkey technologies, the majority of laser applications, for example joining of hybrid materials, 3D printing or ultra-short pulse processing, still require considerable research and development.

What will the energy supply of the future look like? The Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald is dealing with this question.

The generation of electricity power produced by wind turbines is expanding worldwide. This development is associated directly with an increasing demand to test the product reliability, functionality and life durability of wind turbine subsystems like the drive train.

The combination of measuring results from the digital image correlation (ARAMIS, DIC) and temperature measuring data from infrared cameras enables the simultaneous analysis of the thermal and mechanical behavior of test specimens in the materials and components testing field.

Today's power and heating supply in the city of Bern is hardly imaginable without the Forsthaus energy centre (Energiezentrale Forsthaus – EZF). This power plant combines a refuse incineration plant (KVA) with a wood heating power plant and a combined gas‐steam power plant. The Swiss company relies on the WASTE‐SCAN infrared monitoring system from InfraTec for the early fire detection.

Stress changes during tensile testing provide information about material properties of metals such as tensile strength. With the help of thermographic cameras metallic solid bodies can be tested for such stress changes.

How do solid materials change structurally? The engineers Prof. Stefan Seelecke and Marvin Schmidt from Saarland University investigate this fundamental question in materials research. Both consider this topic with the help of micro-thermography. Their cutting‐edge basic research ensures that we will have even more energy‐efficient electric devices to use at home in future.

Climate research is one of the most exposed types of academic research these days. With the continuous discussion about extreme weather events and long‐term implications of human‐made climate factors the related science has become a part of everyone´s daily life.

Mechanically stressed car components like tires are a continuous issue for quality inspection and related R&D improvements. At Bridgestone Corporation in Hofu (Yamaguchi prefecture in South-Western Japan) new test procedures for off-the-road tires for construction and mining vehicles (OR tires) had to be developed to meet the literally growing scale of performance concerning the carrying capacity.

Non-destructive testing methods are becoming increasingly more important in the industry. One reason is that they cost much less than other test methods. As a very elegant method, the active heat flow thermography method is now firmly established as a powerful method of non-contact and non-destructive testing of products of different manufacturing technologies.

Many new systems operate at very high laser intensity levels and consequently require close control of thermal processes. This is achieved by the use of infrared thermography which is both contact-less and provides imagery.

Due to the decreasing number of suitable locations for wind turbines and the increasing push towards renewable energy sources, new activities have been introduced to improve the efficiency of rotor blades for wind turbines.

At the same time that the performance of electronic components is being driven ever higher the demand for thermal management at ever smaller scales is also occurring.

Due to relative good emission ratios of many plastics, infrared thermography is suitable for the extended characterisation of plastic processing technology and its optimisation. This application report exemplifies infrared thermography applications for plastic processing and inspection technologies at the KuZ.

2012 marked an important milestone for the Eastern European Countries of Poland and the Ukraine – the jointly rganized UEFA European Football Championship 2012. While this kind of events generate a wide public attraction there are certain background activities which contribute to a seamless progress significantly: Security and logistics are two core tasks to be handled by the relevant local authorities. 

A ladle typically contains up to 290 tonnes of hot, liquid steel when it is transporting the melted good to the continuous caster. Ladle-temperature measurements with contact-free infrared thermography are an ideal basis for the early detection of impending breakage.

At Delphi’s laboratory plant “Test & Validation Services”, thermography is used for design and product validation as part of quality assurance. Therewith, a stable hardware basis is set for integrating new technologies in motor vehicles that again present a substantial contribution to traffic safety.

Quality assurance and process enhancement is essential to complex industrial processes. Leading businesses rely on certified quality management, to allow for matters of quality and environmental sustainability even during the early stages of manufacturing development. In co‐operation with a leading automotive supplier, InfraTec GmbH enhanced the automated thermography monitoring solution PRESS‐CHECK to inspect the product quality of press hardening with an accuracy of 100 %.

All kind of hot industrial processes need to be contained well to allow the process itself to go on and at the same time to protect neighbouring installations and employees working there. Thermography helps to detect weak points and provides first indications for necessary repairs.

Today gas and steam turbine power plants by the SIEMENS AG are more than ever complex high-tech products. Heavily stressed parts like the turbine blades are tested with the latest measurement techniques for example with infrared thermography.

ARCHIMEDES Facility-Management GmbH uses its infrared camera predominantly for revisions and securing of quality standards during the construction phase of newly erected buildings and the refurbishment of older buildings. Thereby the detection of construction faults like thermal bridges, poor insulations or air leakages plays a major role.

In order to protect bat populations firstly their ecology has to be understood but it can be very difficult to study the small, nocturnal mammals in the wild. Infrared thermography offers solutions to many of the problems faced by bat ecologists.

The company Isabellenhütte Heusler GmbH & Co. KG has identified this potential at an early stage and uses infrared thermography for the quality assurance of their low resistance precision resistors.