Fagus GreCon researcher receives Wilhelm-Klauditz Award

3 December 2021

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The Wilhelm-Klauditz Award has been presented to Dr Torben Marhenke, Fagus GreCon’s team lead Research & Development for research that led to the successful development of a new non-destructive test procedure for recognition of defects with a diameter starting at 1mm.

Dr Marhenke received the Wilhelm-Klauditz Award in Braunschweig during November. The award, which includes €5,000 of prize money, is awarded for outstanding scientific or application-oriented work in the area of wood research and environmental protection every three years. 

When measuring and giving technical determination of mechanical wood parameters of wood materials, nine mechanical parameters are required for clear description of their mechanical material behaviour. The measuring methods developed by Dr Marhenke in the scope of his research permitted non-destructive determination of all nine required parameters reliably and even right in the production process in future.

His further development of the air-coupled ultrasound procedure (ACU) meant much smaller defects could be identified down to a 1mm diameter. This procedure used to be able to only recognise defects starting at a size of 25mm x 25mm.