1,832 patents During the Past Year

Schaeffler registered 1,832 patents in Germany during the past year - the largest number ever. The German Patent and Trademark Office has published the names of Germany's most innovative companies in its annual statistics. Schaeffler increased the number of registered patents by 11.6 percent in comparison with the previous year and is once again ranked fourth behind Bosch, Daimler and Siemens.
"This fourth place and the increase in the number of patent registrations demonstrates our innovative force. After all, an average of seven inventions were filed for patent applications every working day last year. This makes us very proud and I would like to thank all those who made a decisive contribution to increasing our competiveness with their ideas and inventions", says Prof. Peter Gutzmer, Member of the Executive Board of Schaeffler AG, CTO.
Renewable energies are one of the focal points of the research in the Industrial division. This includes bearing supports, which are operated in seawater, for example, in tidal stream or wave power plants. In addition to the high exposure to corrosion due to salt water, these applications are complicated by the fact that oil or grease lubrication of the bearings should be omitted if possible. Instead, the bearings should be "lubricated" with the surrounding medium, i.e. seawater. These bearings are therefore called media lubricated bearings. Schaeffler is consistently driving forward the development of these bearings and supporting this development work by filing relevant industrial property right applications.
The issues energy efficiency and reducing fuel consumption continue to determine the focus of research and development in the Automotive division - and not only for the classic drive train in internal combustion engines, but above all for hybrid solutions and all-electric vehicles.
Downsizing and downspeeding are two approaches for significantly reducing fuel consumption in internal combustion engines. There is therefore a trend towards engines with a smaller number of combustion chambers. This results in more pronounced vibration behavior, which in turn necessitates new damping concepts. The centrifugal pendulum-type absorber is an innovative key technology for solving the vibration problems at low speeds.