Review: 17. Conference „The Working Process of the Internal Combustion Engine“

Under the motto "The working process of the combustion engine", the leading minds in international engine research came together for the 17th time at the Graz Congress from September 26 - 27, 2019, to discuss trends as well as sustainable and forward-looking approaches in engine research. In terms of content, everything revolved around those key technologies with which pollutant emissions can be further reduced and the UN climate goals achieved: E-fuels and other synthetically produced fuels, electric and fuel cell drives, strategies for increasing efficiency and reducing emissions, and concepts for more durable engine components. The opportunities offered by digitalization in the field of engine research were also examined in depth.

Whether for cars, trucks or large engines: In the research and development of new concepts for internal combustion engines, environmental compatibility has been the guiding theme. The symposium provided a unique opportunity to discuss global developments on the subject with almost 300 participants here in Graz. In more than 40 presentations, new approaches as well as proven concepts were presented to help curb the climate crisis.

This year the conference was again organized together with the LEC, a K1 center of Graz University of Technology. This year's event also included the "Sustainable Shipping Technologies Forum". With this new format, an overview of the current developments in the field of emission¬free ocean shipping was offered for the first time. For this purpose, we succeeded in bringing 12 highly innovative international shipping research projects to Graz. In addition, the first LEC Data Challenge was launched. With this Data Challenge, the LEC wanted to encourage data-enthusiastic students and practitioners from different disciplines to develop data-based fault detection methods for test bed applications. To this end, a training data set was provided, as well as a second, error-prone test data set. The goal was to find as many faults as possible in the test data set. Prizes worth a total of € 6,000 were awarded for the best work at the end of the conference.

In the anterooms of the conference halls, 14 exhibitors met an interested audience of experts.

The already traditional conference dinner, to which this year the province of Styria and the city of Graz together with the organizer invited, took us to the "Alte Universität" Graz.