Obituary - Professor Dr.-Ing. Erwin Eugen Haibach of Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF) Darmstadt and thereafter head of Seilprüfstelle und Institut für Fördertechnik und Werkstoffkunde (Rope Testing Centre and Institute for Materials Handling and Materials Testing) in Bochum.
The EIS is saddened to report that Prof. Erwin Haibach, one of the great names in fatigue, died earlier this year. It would be hard to summarise his long and illustrious career, so we are grateful to Dr Kloos for the obituary below, and to the various others who knew and speak highly of him. Prof. Haibach was a very gifted and intelligent man who did a lot for the fatigue community. He was a leading member of a German group that published guidelines on strength assessment and, in 2004, he approached the Society directly to let us know of an English version of the FKM-guideline “Analytical Strength Assessment of Components in Mechanical Engineering”. Needless to say he had translated the text for us, but preserved the German symbols and equations to avoid errors and to aid understanding. These guidelines are also included in some of the regulations for the design and certification of wind turbines, so they are in regular use a decade later. He was part of the old guard that contributed a lot to our current understanding of fatigue and helped provide the basis for the technology that we use nearly every day in our jobs. Such a dedicated and passionate person cannot be replaced. He will be missed. Robert Cawte, EIS Obituary for PROFESSOR. DR.-ING. ERWIN EUGEN HAIBACH By Professor Emeritus Dr.-Ing. KarlHeinz Kloos Professor Dr.-Ing. Erwin Eugen Haibach died on February 2nd, 2013, at the age of 80 years. He was a long time member of the management
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In particular, many of his university colleagues are mourning with the family at the loss of a kindhearted scientist and skillful teacher. Being a long-time companion of Erwin Haibach I want to give an appraisal of his scientific achievements in the field of Structural Durability: a subject which he first studied under Professor Ernst Gaßner, who was the founder of this branch of study. Erwin Haibach influenced this field decisively in its later development. Structural Durability means a concept for the dimensioning of components subjected to random cyclic loading, where the experimental and numerical methods for the lifetime assignment of components are significantly affected by the material, the production process and the design and geometry and their interaction. At the beginning of his scientific work in the Laboratory for Structural Durability in Darmstadt, Erwin Haibach initially worked on the lifetime and fatigue strength of welded joint problems; the results of which were published in his dissertation (1968): “The fatigue strength of welded joints from the perspective of a local strain measurement”. Welded joints are of special interest in fatigue research because, besides the design-related notch effects, the cast state of the weld seam and, above all, the residual stress distribution in the whole weld seam area, have a significant influence on the fatigue properties. The personal contact between Erwin
Haibach and myself deepened as a result of the close personal contacts between the management of Fraunhofer LBF and the Institute of Materials Science at Darmstadt University of Technology in the 1950s and ‘60s. Furthermore, we already knew each other from our joint schooldays at Limburg secondary school, and the time when Erwin Haibach did his thesis at the Institute for Materials Science. More contacts resulted from the many lectures given by Erwin Haibach at the annual meetings of the Association of German Engineers (VDI), the German Association for Materials Research and Testing (DVM) and the German Welding Society (DVS). Erwin Haibach continued his intensive lecture activities for the benefit of the scientific community during his time (1973 to 1981) as a manager at the Fraunhofer LBF and as head of the Seilprüfstelle (Rope Testing Centre, Bochum) from 1981 to 1992. The most important scientific achievement of Erwin Haibach is without doubt the publication: “Structural Durability – Methods and Data for Calculation” which was first published in 1989 and, again, in a third edition in 2006. As well as presenting an up-to-date statement of the knowledge about the different calculation methods according to the nominal stress approach, the notch stress concept and fracture mechanics principles, this book provides a wealth of information to readers who are likewise interested in the research base and practical engineering applications. In particular, Chapter 4, “Practical Implementation of the Structural Durability Concept”, presented a procedure demonstrating that considerations of fatigue strength that provided excellent and userfriendly methods for use by almost all branches of mechanical and civil engineering. Also, the critical review of the experimental and numerical