Corporate Technology - Rolf Hellinger

CT Russia
Although CT Russia is one of the more recent additions to the
Siemens family of corporate R&D locations, it has already made
a name for itself in the fields of materials science, energy
conservation, industrial automation, and software engineering.
Since its establishment in 2005, the organization’s workforce
has risen from two to 45. Along with its headquarters in Moscow,
CT Russia now also operates a research facility in St. Petersburg
— the world’s most northerly city with a population of more
than one million.
Simulating and Optimizing
Materials and Systems
Russia is not only one of Germany’s most important
trading partners; it’s also a key market
for Siemens. It was therefore only logical
that the company decided to open a Corporate
Technology office in the world’s largest country
in 2005. Since that time, CT Russia’s director,
Martin Gitsels, has built up the office’s Moscow
headquarters and has also established a second
location in St. Petersburg. Today, CT Russia employs
45 men and women whose research
focuses on the development and processing of
industrial materials, innovative concepts for
combustion in turbines, state-of-the-art technology
for oil and gas production, and softwareintensive
automation systems. The organization
also works closely with partner institutes and
universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg in all
28 Corporate Technology
of these fields (see p. 44). Gitsel’s team of researchers
has already achieved noticeable successes
with innovations in areas such as gas
turbines, heat exchanger technologies, and
process automation.
Nanostructured Materials
The Russian researchers’ work in the field of
modern industrial materials mainly involves the
development of new types of nanostructured
materials that have huge surface areas in relation
to their volume. This innovative property
makes possible completely new functions in a
huge range of industrial applications. Among
other things, plans call for nanostructured ceramic
materials to be used as heat-insulating
layers in gas turbines, as they are much more
elastic and less brittle than the ceramic layers
that are now in use, and therefore last longer as
well. Other aspects of materials research in Russia
include high-performance metal alloys and
computer-aided materials development systems
whose specialized software enables CT engineers
to simulate the composition and behavior
of a material all the way down to the atomic level.
Staff at CT Russia also employ mathematical models
and software to optimize material designs.
Predicting Crack Paths
The latest example of work in this field is the
“Crack Path Prediction” project, which is designed
to prevent different kinds of materials
from cracking. To this end, researchers are developing
various fracture mechanics simulation
methods that analyze how cracks spread under
static and dynamic stresses, and how components
can fail as a result. The goal here is to use
the information gained from analyses of multilayered
components to predict fracture behavior.
Multi-layered components can be found in
many Siemens products and solutions, including
turbine blade coatings that need to withstand
temperatures of well over 1,000 degrees
Celsius. Results from the Crack Path Prediction
project have already made it possible for Gitsels’
team to simulate these coatings under actual
operating conditions and thus precisely analyze
how cracks develop and propagate.
Thanks to this research, CT Russia is, for example,
making it possible for Siemens engineers
to develop very high quality gas turbines and individual
turbine components. Research in the