Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) have been recognized as key ecological players in arid and semiarid regions at both local and global scales. They are important biodiversity components, provide critical ecosystem services, and strongly influence soil-plant relationships, and successional trajectories via facilitative, competitive, and edaphic engineering effects. Despite these important ecological roles, very little is known about biocrusts in seasonally dry tropical forests. Here we present a first baseline study on biocrust cover and ecosystem service provision in a human-modified landscape of the Brazilian Caatinga, South America's largest tropical dry forest. More specifically, we explored (1) across a network of 34 0.1 ha permanent plots the impact of disturbance, soil, precipitation, and vegetation-related parameters on biocrust cover in different stages of forest regeneration, and (2) the effect of disturbance on species composition, growth and soil organic carbon sequestration comparing early and late successional communities in two case study sites at opposite ends of the disturbance gradient. Our findings revealed that biocrusts are a conspicuous component of the Caatinga ecosystem with at least 50 different taxa of cyanobacteria, algae, lichens and bryophytes (cyanobacteria and bryophytes dominating) covering nearly 10% of the total land surface and doubling soil organic carbon content relative to bare topsoil. High litter cover, high disturbance by goats, and low soil compaction were the leading drivers for reduced biocrust cover, while precipitation was not associated Second-growth forests supported anequally spaced biocrust cover, while in old-growth-forests biocrust cover was patchy. Disturbance reduced biocrust growth by two thirds and carbon sequestration by half. In synthesis, biocrusts increase soil organic carbon (SOC) in dry forests and as they double the SOC content in disturbed areas, may be capable of counterbalancing disturbance-induced soil degradation in this ecosystem. As they fix and fertilize depauperated soils, they may play a substantial role in vegetation regeneration in the human-modified Caatinga, and may have an extended ecological role due to the ever-increasing human encroachment on natural landscapes. Even though biocrusts benefit from human presence in dry forests, high levels of anthropogenic disturbance could threaten biocrust-provided ecosystem services, and call for further, in-depth studies to elucidate the underlying mechanisms.

To exploit the whole potential of Additive Manufacturing (AM), a sound knowledge about the mechanical and especially cyclic properties of AM materials as well as their dependency on the process parameters is indispensable. In the presented work, the influence of chemical composition of the used powder on the fatigue behavior of Selectively Laser Melted (SLM) and Laser Deposition Welded (LDW) specimens made of austenitic stainless steel AISI 316L was investigated. Therefore, in each manufacturing process two variations of chemical composition of the used powder were utilized. For qualitative characterization of the materials cyclic deformation behavior, load increase tests (LITs) were performed and further used for the physically based lifetime calculation method (PhyBaLLIT), enabling an efficient determination of stress (S)–number of cycles to failure (Nf) curves (S–Nf), which show excellent correlation to additionally performed constant amplitude tests (CATs). Moreover, instrumented cyclic indentation tests (PhyBaLCHT) were utilized to characterize the materials’ defect tolerance in a comparably short time. All material variants exhibit a high influence of microstructural defects on the fatigue properties. Consequently, for the SLM process a higher fatigue lifetime at lower stress amplitudes could be observed for the batch with a higher defect tolerance, resulting from a more pronounced deformation induced austenite–α’-martensite transformation. In correspondence to that, the batch of LDW material with an increased defect tolerance exhibit a higher fatigue strength. However, the differences in defect tolerance between the LDW batches is only slightly influenced by phase transformation and seems to be mainly governed by differences in hardening potential of the austenitic microstructure. Furthermore, a significantly higher fatigue strength could be observed for SLM material in relation to LDW specimens, because of a refined microstructure and smaller microstructural defects of SLM specimens.

Faser-Kunststoff-Verbunde erfahren aufgrund ihrer guten gewichtsspezifischen mechanischen Kennwerte eine zunehmende Verbreitung in verschiedensten Anwendungsfeldern. Eine Voraussetzung für die Ausnutzung der Leichtbaupotenziale bei gleichzeitiger Begrenzung der Herstellkosten ist jedoch eine werkstoffgerechte Lasteinleitung durch geeignete Verbindungsverfahren. Gegenstand dieser Arbeit ist die Untersuchung eines Ansatzes zur Herstellung von Strukturen aus Faser-Kunststoff-Verbund durch eine getrennte Herstellung von teilausgehärteten Substrukturen mit anschließender Verbindung durch gemeinsame Vollaushärtung. Zur umfassenden Analyse der Prozessfenster und Potenziale werden zunächst am Beispiel eines faserverstärkten Werkstoffes auf Epoxidharzbasis die wichtigsten Zustands- und Eigenschaftsänderungen während der Vernetzung des Matrixharzes charakterisiert. Als Resultat dieser Analysen können die Entwicklung des Aushärtegrads bei verschiedener Temperaturführung im Aushärteprozess sowie die grundlegenden mechanischen Eigenschaften von Matrixwerkstoff und Verbund bei verschiedenen Aushärtegraden quantifiziert werden. Aufbauend auf diesen Ergebnissen werden anhand experimenteller Untersuchungen an durch gemeinsame Aushärtung hergestellten Laminaten die Verbindungseigenschaften in Abhängigkeit von unterschiedlichen Einflussfaktoren ermittelt. Für die zwei Prozessvarianten Autoklavprozess und Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) wird die Energiefreisetzungsrate unter Mode I-Belastung bei Variation des Aushärtegrads der zu verbindenden Laminate analysiert. Die Variation der Verbindungseigenschaften wird anhand von rasterelektronenmikroskopischen Untersuchungen der Bruchfläche erklärt. Weiterhin wird der Einfluss der Oberflächeneigenschaften durch Anwendung verschiedener Vorbehandlungen analysiert. Die Oberflächeneigenschaften Oberflächenspannung, Topografie und chemische Zusammensetzung werden gemessen und hinsichtlich ihrer Prognosefähigkeit für die Verbindungseigenschaften diskutiert. Zur Demonstration der Umsetzbarkeit der Herstellmethode auf Bauteilebene werden für den Einsatz im Luftfahrtbereich typische Details hergestellt und mechanisch geprüft. Die Eigenschaften der in der hier untersuchten Methodik hergestellten Details zeigen nur geringe Abweichungen im Vergleich zu denen der Referenzmethode.

We present an overview of functional metallic microstructures fabricated via direct laser writing out of the liquid phase. Metallic microstructures often are key components in diverse applications such as, e.g., microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Since the metallic component’s functionality mostly depends on other components, a technology that enables on-chip fabrication of these metal structures is highly desirable. Direct laser writing via multiphoton absorption is such a fabrication method. In the past, it has mostly been used to fabricate multidimensional polymeric structures. However, during the last few years different groups have put effort into the development of novel photosensitive materials that enable fabrication of metallic—especially gold and silver—microstructures. The results of these efforts are summarized in this review and show that direct laser fabrication of metallic microstructures has reached the level of applicability.

A distributional solution framework is developed for systems consisting of linear hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs) and switched differential algebraic equations (DAEs) which are coupled via boundary conditions. The unique solvability is then characterize in terms of a switched delay DAE. The theory is illustrated with an example of electric power lines modeled by the telegraph equations which are coupled via a switching transformer where simulations confirm the predicted impulsive solutions.