Heinrich Rake

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Heinrich Rake (born June 8, 1936 in Rostock ) is a German mechanical engineer and professor of systems theory and control engineering .

Life

Rake studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Hanover . During this time he was employed as a student assistant by the mechanics professor Eduard Pestel , who later became a control engineering book author, Minister for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and co-founder of the Club of Rome . After graduating as a graduate engineer in 1963, he became a Dr.-Ing. In 1965 with Herbert Schlitt , Chair of Control Engineering at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering , with the dissertation of self-adjusting systems according to the gradient method . PhD. During his studies he co-founded a Christian-oriented academic university group whose mentor was the world-famous production engineer Otto Kienzle .

From 1966 to 1971 he worked as a senior engineer at the Institute for Automatic Control (IRT) at RWTH Aachen University and completed his habilitation in 1969 with the work of identifying linear systems with statistical methods . In 1971 he became professor for systems theory at RWTH Aachen . Here he took over the management of the Institute for Automatic Control in 1977 from his predecessor and institute founder Otto Schäfer . He was one of the first three institute founders for control engineering in German-speaking countries: 1955 at the TH Dresden by Heinrich Kindler , in 1957 at the TH Darmstadt by Winfried Oppelt and at the same time at the RWTH Aachen by Otto Schäfer .

Rake headed the institute from 1977 to 2001 and after 24 years, when he retired, handed it over to his academic student Dirk Abel when he was appointed professor. The doctrine on his vocation field practiced rake with passion, and this led among its students to high recognition (nickname "rule-Rake").

In research he built up a wide range of contacts with industrial companies and cultivated them on a long-term basis. At the same time, he succeeded in making the institute more application-oriented. During the period of his institute management the main research areas were: adaptive switching regulators, regulation and control of handling devices, regulation and control of ventilation and air conditioning systems, the control of event-oriented processes and system analysis. At RWTH, other application-oriented chairs were created in other faculties: Measurement technology (head: Tilo Pfeifer ) and process control technology (head: Martin Polke ).

Rake gained special recognition for his work on the identification of technical systems, in which different parametric and non-parametric model approaches were treated as well as the development of adapted parameter estimation methods. These successes in the field of identification led to the development of the first adaptive predictive controllers in the early 1980s, in which process models form the basis for a predictive optimization of the manipulated variable curves. This patented work was of great importance for industrial practice and also led to the market launch of a model-based compact controller . Rake supervised about 60 graduate engineers in their doctoral thesis, u. a. the later professors Dirk Abel and Uwe Zimmermann .

In addition to teaching, research and institute management, Rake actively supported academic self-administration. From 1987 to 1997 he was one of the university's three vice- rectors, responsible for the "budget planning and finances" department. Here he introduced important measures to increase effectiveness within the university, e.g. B. a fair distribution of funds as well as preparations for financial autonomy at RWTH.

Rake actively worked in the “Basics, Theory” department with around 10 specialist committees and in various committees of the VDI / VDE Society for Measurement and Automation Technology (GMA) in Düsseldorf / Frankfurt a. M. and was also on the board of this specialist society (chairmen from Aachen: Tilo Pfeifer , Martin Polke ). This collaboration has resulted in numerous scientific events in which Rake and his institute participated. The discussions in the professional society were strongly stimulated by Rake, and he himself received diverse impulses for the profiling of his teaching and research activities as well as extensive connections to specialist colleagues: G. Bretthauer , Freiberg / Karlsruhe; L. Litz and D. Zühlke , Kaiserslautern; U. Jumar, Magdeburg; G. Gerlach, Dresden; S. Engell, Dortmund; E. Welfonder, Stuttgart; R. Isermann , Darmstadt; W. Kriesel , Leipzig / Merseburg; R. Schumann, Hanover; H. Steusloff and HJ Benez, Karlsruhe; H. Drathen, Leverkusen; W. Slovakia, Koblenz; B. Reißenweber, Paderborn and others

Overall, Rake enjoyed a high reputation in the professional world and had numerous worldwide contacts.

Fonts (selection)

  • Self-adjusting systems based on the gradient method. Dissertation, TH Hannover, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Hannover 1965.
  • Identification of linear systems using statistical methods. Habilitation thesis, RWTH Aachen, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Aachen 1969.
  • Control engineering. Institute for Automatic Control, RWTH Aachen University, 17th edition 1993.
  • KH Fasol , R. Lauber; F. Mesch, H. Rake, M. Thoma , H. Töpfer : Great Names and the Early Days of Control in Germany. In: Automation technology, Munich. Vol. 54, No. 9, 2006, pp. 462-472.

literature

  • Otto Schäfer : Basics of the automatic regulation. Technischer Verlag Heinz Resch, Graefelfing 1953, 7th edition 1974.
  • Winfried Oppelt : Small manual of technical control processes. Verlag Chemie, Weinheim, 1st edition 1954; Verlag Chemie, Weinheim and Verlag Technik, Berlin, 5th edition 1972.
  • Herbert Schlitt : System theory for random processes - statistical methods for communications and control technology. Springer Verlag, Berlin; Göttingen; Heidelberg 1960.
  • Heinrich Kindler : Collection of exercises on control engineering. Verlag Technik Berlin, Oldenbourg-Verlag Munich, Vienna, 1964 (with H. Buchta and H.-H. Wilfert).
  • Eduard Pestel , Eckart Kollmann: Fundamentals of control engineering. Vieweg Verlag, Braunschweig 1968, 3rd edition Vieweg & Teubner, Wiesbaden 1979, ISBN 978-3-322-96097-9 .
  • Herbert Schlitt : Stochastic processes in linear and non-linear control loops. Vieweg Verlag, Braunschweig, Verlag Technik, Berlin 1968.
  • Manfred Thoma : Theory of linear control systems - with 71 examples and 150 exercises. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1973. ISBN 3-528-04850-6 .
  • Karl Reinisch : Cybernetic basics and description of continuous systems . Verlag Technik Berlin 1974.
  • Mihailo D. Mesarović, Eduard Pestel : Humanity at the turning point - 2nd report to the Club of Rome on the world situation. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-421-02670-X .
  • Otto Schäfer and Heinz Bültges: Controls with switching controllers in the event of stochastic disturbances. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1981, ISBN 3-531-03034-5 .
  • Frank Dittmann: On the development of the “general regulatory knowledge” in Germany. Hermann Schmidt and the “Memorandum for the establishment of an institute for control engineering”. In: Wiss. TU Dresden magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, 1995, pp. 88-94.
  • Werner Kriesel , H. Rohr, A. Koch: History and future of measurement and automation technology. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-18-150047-X .
  • Association of German Engineers, VDI / VDE-GMA (Ed.): Yearbook 1997 VDI / VDE Society for Measurement and Automation Technology. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-18-401611-0 .
  • Norbert Beleke (Ed.): Who is who? The German who's who . 45th edition, Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2006, ISBN 978-3-7950-2042-2 , p. 1045.
  • Norbert Gilson, Walter Kaiser: Electricity, energy, information - the history of the faculty for electrical engineering and information technology at RWTH Aachen. In: Volume 6 of Aachen contributions to the history of science and technology in the 20th century. Verlag for the history of natural sciences and technology, Diepholz 2010, p. 201. ISBN 3-928186-89-2 .
  • Werner Kriesel : Future models for computer science, automation and communication. In: Fuchs-Kittowski, Frank; Kriesel, Werner (ed.): Computer science and society. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski . Frankfurt a. M., Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Vienna: Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, PL Academic Research 2016, ISBN 978-3-631-66719-4 (print), E- ISBN 978-3-653 -06277-9 (e-book).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rita Seidel, Günter Spur , Hans Kurt Tönshoff (Ed.): Otto Kienzle. Systematic of manufacturing technology. An engineer on a train through time. Hanser, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-446-43033-4 , p. 361.
  2. ↑ History of the IRT ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , RWTH Aachen University, accessed on December 15, 2014.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.irt.rwth-aachen.de
personal data
SURNAME Rake, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mechanical engineer, professor of systems theory and control engineering
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock