Contents

Disclaimer

Central findings of this thesis base on material which has been partly published in journal publications and conference proceedings. According to the consensus of several guidelines of Austrian funding agencies and Austrian Universities regarding proper scientific work, the ideas of these publications are re-used with explicit citation at several positions in this thesis. The thesis puts the individual topics of the publications together with unreported topics into a larger context.

Statutory declaration

I declare that I have authored this thesis independently, that I have not used other than the declared sources / resources, and that I have explicitly marked all material which has been quoted either literally or by content from the used sources.

November 29, 2018  

Acknowledgments / Danksagung

• • I want to sincerely thank Tibor Grasser for the professional guidance of my PhD during the entire three years of my thesis.

• • I thank all my colleagues at KAI and IFAT. I especially thank Josef Fugger and Michael Nelhiebel for the opportunity to join KAI. Furthermore, I thank Gregor Pobegen and Thomas Aichinger for their important inputs and discussions.

• • Zu guter Letzt möchte ich mich noch bei Betti, Franz, Gisi, Martin und Bernhard für all die Unterstützung über die letzten Jahre hinweg bedanken! Diese Arbeit wäre ohne euch nicht möglich gewesen!

• • This work was funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG, Project No. 860424).