Tech­no­logy & In­nov­a­tion

Con­cen­trated ex­pert­ise – world­wide sup­port for tech­nical chal­lenges.

Be­hind each KAEFER en­tity stands the KAEFER Group with its Cor­por­ate In­nov­a­tion & Tech­nical Ex­cel­lence de­part­ment and its global ex­pert net­work. Be­sides Re­search and De­vel­op­ment, this team of ex­per­i­enced en­gin­eers provides ad­di­tional tech­nical sup­port (in­clud­ing cal­cu­la­tions, sim­u­la­tions, and labor­at­ory tests) for ship­build­ing, in­dustry & con­struc­tion in­dustry in the fields of:

  • Thermal insulation (cold & hot)
  • Acoustics
  • Passive Fire Protection
  • Surface Protection
  • NDT & inspection technology
  • Access technology
  • Asset integrity management
  • Thermography / Energy audits
  • Renewable Energies
  • Technical guidelines, standards, patents
  • Application tests & research
  • Cryogenic insulation solutions (LNG & LPG)
  • Steady state and non-steady state calculations / simulations for mechanical loads and thermal system behaviour

Contact our global expert

Thomas-Peter Wilk

Corporate Innovation & Technical Excellence

Our Laboratories

Cor­por­ate In­nov­a­tion & Tech­nical Ex­cel­lence of­fers a com­plete range of ser­vices, from in­su­la­tion design and con­cep­tu­al­isa­tion to ma­ter­ial test­ing and in­stall­a­tion. We count on three labor­at­or­ies and one test area.

In these labs it is pos­sible to test en­tire in­su­la­tion sys­tems un­der dif­fer­ent bound­ary con­di­tions, res­ult­ing in a hol­istic ana­lysis of their prop­er­ties and cap­ab­il­it­ies.

  • Acoustic laboratory
  • Climate testing laboratory
  • Material testing laboratory
  • Insulation test area

Our expertise

With over 50 years of ex­per­i­ence, the Cor­por­ate In­nov­a­tion & Tech­nical Ex­cel­lence de­part­ment is an es­tab­lished mar­ket leader in in­su­la­tion con­sult­ing, provid­ing pro­fes­sional solu­tions for even the most com­plex tech­nical chal­lenges.

 

Current Highlights

  • System design and test under cryogenic conditions for a Federal German association
  • Long-term endurance test for a supplier of the European aviation industry
  • Finalisation and endurance test of own humidity sensor technology
How KAEFER can help detect & avoid CUI

Tech­nical cal­cu­la­tions and sim­u­la­tions

From the heat and hu­mid­ity of the trop­ics to the dry cold of the arc­tic tun­dra, we have ex­per­i­enced the widest vari­ety of con­di­tions that can af­fect heat, cold and sound in­su­la­tion. And we’ve done that without even leav­ing our of­fices. That’s be­cause we have a range of labor­at­ory test­ing fa­cil­it­ies avail­able in house to en­sure that ma­ter­i­als are fit for the job – no mat­ter how chal­len­ging the con­di­tions may be.

In ad­di­tion to tests in our cli­mate cham­bers, we also per­form mech­an­ical, cryo­genic and acous­tic meas­ure­ments as well. And we can check for fire safety with small-scale fire tests. The pur­pose is not just to cer­tify safety and per­form­ance, but also to re­duce our cli­ents’ en­ergy con­sump­tion as well.

It does­n’t mat­ter if it’s us­ing thermal ima­ging to see the en­ergy es­cap­ing from a ship­ping ves­sel or sub­ject com­pon­ents to the most ex­treme pres­sures and tem­per­at­ures for the Air­bus A400M air­craft, KAE­FER’s Tech­nical Ex­cel­lence and Sup­port team will rise to the chal­lenge.

We do the designs for your needs using different methods and systems:

3D design of insulation

Heat Insulation

  • Thermal cal­cu­la­tions
  • FEA
  • CFD
  • Large scale test­ing

Surface Protection

  • Clean­ing & Pre­par­a­tion
  • Coat­ing
  • In­spec­tion
  • Dam­age as­sess­ment

Cold Insulation

  • Cryo­genic test stand
  • Heat flow meas­ure­ments

Passive Fire Protection

  • Sys­tem as­sess­ment
  • Cal­cu­la­tion
  • Test­ing

Sound Insulation

  • Meas­ure­ments
  • En­gin­eer­ing
  • Noise pre­dic­tion

Special Solutions

  • Scaf­fold­ing
  • Pat­ents
  • Stand­ards & Guidelines

KAEFER Labor­at­or­ies

KAEFER's acoustic laboratory
Acoustic laboratory

The acous­tic labor­at­ory in Bre­men en­ables us to carry out sys­tem tests in our own wall and pipe test stand.

Op­timal room con­di­tions and low flank­ing trans­mis­sions al­low sound meas­ure­ments even at heav­iest com­pon­ents, e. g. ship’s struc­ture, air ducts or pipes. Modi­fic­a­tions of the test area en­able meas­ure­ments of doors, in­dus­trial pan­els as well as pan­els of min­imum size.

The room char­ac­ter­ist­ics and the test meth­ods ap­plied meet the re­quire­ments of European reg­u­la­tions. The meas­ure­ment res­ults can be com­pared with those of ac­cred­ited in­sti­tutes, evid­ence of which provided by nu­mer­ous pro­jects.

Spe­ci­mens in­clud­ing their as­sembly are car­ried out in co­oper­a­tion with the nearby KAEFER work­shops, which means high flex­ib­il­ity and low costs.

KAEFER's material testing laboratory
Material testing laboratory

In our ma­ter­ial test­ing labor­at­ory, we have nu­mer­ous pos­sib­il­it­ies for sup­port­ing en­gin­eers of the KAEFER Group early on in their tasks, by test­ing jointly de­veloped ideas un­der labor­at­ory and un­der crit­ical con­di­tions. Des­pite the name of the lab, we can test also small-scale in­su­la­tion sys­tems, like e. g. a glued samples of PUR us­ing dif­fer­ent ad­hes­ives.

In do­ing so, the ex­per­i­ence we have gathered in min­im­iz­ing risks of tech­nic­ally de­mand­ing solu­tions proves be­ne­fi­cial.

We al­ways ad­opt an out-of-the-box per­spect­ive – that is what we are here for. We look for al­tern­at­ives, in­teg­rate what is time-tested and de­velop new sys­tems in or­der to find the op­timal solu­tion for every task, profit­ing all the while from a large net­work of re­search fa­cil­it­ies, in­sti­tutes and other ma­ter­ial test­ing labor­at­or­ies.

We of­fer:

  • Mechanical test under lab and critical conditions
  • Determination of thermal conductivity
  • Microscopic investigations
  • Determination of open cell content
  • Small-scale indicative test of the flame resistance (burning chamber – B2 Test)

And much more!

KAEFER's climatic chamber
Climate testing laboratory

The KAEFER cli­mate test­ing labor­at­ory has a large range of equip­ment at its dis­posal, in­clud­ing a walk-in cli­matic cham­ber.

A tem­per­at­ure range from -75°C to 120°C is a unique fea­ture of the 15 m³ cham­ber. The walk-in cham­ber is ex­pand­ible 5 meters more in the length giv­ing us more space for long spe­ci­mens that do not need to be test at ex­treme con­di­tions.

The cli­matic cham­ber has its own air sup­ply which can be re­dir­ec­ted to closed spe­ci­mens in or­der to vary the in­ternal pres­sure, test­ing like that the mech­an­ical prop­er­ties sim­ul­tan­eously to the tem­per­at­ure and air hu­mid­ity.

This test rig was only made pos­sible by fit­ting the cli­matic cham­ber with an air pres­sure sys­tem put to­gether and con­figured by KAEFER en­gin­eers.

Be­side the cli­matic and pres­sure tests we can con­nect dif­fer­ent kind of sensors to the cli­matic cham­ber, like e. g.  move­ment trans­duct­ors.

All test para­met­ers and res­ults are re­cor­ded and stored in di­gital form. All meas­ure­ments are per­formed us­ing cal­ib­rated sensors, guar­an­tee­ing a high ac­cur­acy.

In case of small test spe­ci­mens, cli­matic cab­in­ets are avail­able:

  • Climatic cabinets: Temperature from +10 °C to 100 °C / Air humidity from 10 % to 90 %
  • Oven for conditioning: temperature up to 300 °C
  • High temperature Oven: temperature up to 1.200 °C
KAEFER's insulation test area
Insulation testing area

In this test area we can in­vest­ig­ate in­su­la­tion sys­tems un­der nat­ural weather con­di­tions. Long-term test, in­stall­a­tion and per­form­ance tri­als are the fo­cus of the test rig, where com­plete in­su­la­tion sys­tems can be ana­lysed (coat­ing, in­su­la­tion ma­ter­ial, sub-struc­ture, clad­ding, glues and ad­hes­ives, mon­it­or­ing sys­tems and sensors).

  • 30-meter pipe length
  • Diameter DN 150 (168 mm)
  • Internal pipe temperature until 180 °C
  • Different insulation materials, coatings, and surface treatment
  • Data acquisition of all relevant data

Re­new­able En­er­gies

When it comes to re­new­able en­ergy, the pos­sib­il­it­ies of us­ing the sun as a power source go from re­as­sur­ance to ex­cite­ment.

For ex­ample, gas tur­bines use con­cen­trated solar power (CSP) as its heat source com­ing from a mir­ror field and heat ex­changer moun­ted on a solar plat­form. By us­ing mir­rors rather than photo­vol­taic pan­els, the tur­bine is able to use a much lar­ger pro­por­tion of solar power. The gas tur­bine can then also be used to run a con­ven­tional steam tur­bine, which res­ults in the gen­er­a­tion of even more en­ergy, mak­ing the most out of every ray of sun­shine.

A mul­tidiscip­lin­ary ap­proach is the key to KAE­FER’s think­ing when it comes to re­new­able en­ergy. It’s about cre­at­ing clever com­bin­a­tions of vari­ous en­er­gies and tech­nical meth­ods to bring in­nov­a­tion. And ad­opt­ing a mod­u­lar method to re­new­ables helps us to get a few steps fur­ther to­wards sus­tain­able en­ergy and in­creas­ing ef­fi­ciency.

KAEFER is at the fore­front of ef­forts to in­crease the ef­fi­ciency and be­ne­fit of solar power and is also act­ive in the re­search, en­gin­eer­ing, design and im­ple­ment­a­tion of in­nov­at­ive solu­tions for the ‘cleantech’ mar­ket.

Our products & solutions for the ‘cleantech’ market

  • Insulation solutions for high temperature receiver technology
  • Decentralised solar heated combined cycles
  • ORC heat recovery systems
  • Power units for alternative fuels
  • Engineering and design, research and process development
  • Consulting
  • Turnkey renewable energy solutions
  • Project execution
  • Purchase of materials and services
Gemasolar CSP facility, Spain © Torresol Energy
Gemasolar CSP facility, Spain © Torresol Energy
Gemasolar tower in operation © Torresol Energy
Gemasolar tower in operation © Torresol Energy
Ibersol CSP facility, Spain
Ibersol CSP facility, Spain