Sören Müller has been awarded a Doctorate of Engineering (Dr.-Ing.)

On 5 February 2016, Sören Müller was awarded the academic degree of Doctor of Engineering (Dr.-Ing.) from the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern. The topic of his dissertation was: "On the design of innovative concrete collector elements for solar-thermic parabolic trough power plants".

His paper presented a concept for collector elements made of concrete as an alternative to collector elements made of steel structures. After selecting a suitable concrete composition taking into account the possibilities afforded by high-performance forms of concrete, Dr Müller has created parabolic trough collector elements and from these constructed a large-scale demonstrator.

In parallel, he carried out numeric analyses, one of the reasons being to investigate the potential for optimisation. The primary role in these was played by the so-called intercept factor, which is a measurement of the efficiency of the collector system. However, the large-scale demonstrator constructed shows a reduced intercept factor.

By using possible optimisations that were implemented and systematically analysed within the framework of the parameter studies, it was possible to drastically increase the intercept factor.

In his paper, Dr Müller lists and assesses the parabolic trough collector elements that are crucial in this implementation. These criteria concern the low deformation and the dimensional stability of the concrete elements, the high level of bending tensile strength of the concrete with suitable rheological properties, the reduced hardening time and the low-shrink nature of the concrete.

Criteria for cost-efficient manufacture and for high added value in-situ were not further investigated as part of this paper, but they are to be the subject of further investigations.

Dr Müller’s dissertation was written while he was working as a member of the scientific staff at the Institute for Concrete Construction and Structural Design at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern.

We would like to extend our sincere congratulations to Dr Sören Müller on this splendid achievement.