Abstract
The automobile industry shows us the direction. Vehicles shall continually become lighter, more efficient, ecologically and, at the same time, stay affordable. The customer's increasing ecological sensibility and a general social responsibility in the use of resources bring issues such as electro mobility or the application of high-performance materials into the focus of developmental work. Automobile manufacturers such as BMW are implementing what no one deemed to be possible before - the production of car bodies made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) in series. A comparable light weight innovation technology was generated by researchers of the Fraunhofer Institute of Machine Tools and Forming Industry with a different kind of material: metal foams. The following two examples are taken from two different industries and shall illustrate the application of metal foam.