This Minor is taught in English

How do top-of-the-market companies keep their products up-to-date to changing needs and ahead of the competition? Advanced Design optimisation is used by Producers such as Samsonite®, Ahrend® and Bugaboo® to keep their products the lightest, strongest, most durable, reliable, most sustainable and safest on the market. In this course you will get the learn how they manage to do this.

What will you be doing?

You will be introduced to different methods to analyze products in a structured way. A FEM (Finite Element method) course will give you knowledge on how to optimise products for strength and stiffness using simulation software. You will get an individual assignment in the first half of the course to get familiar with these methods in several product design cases.

In a group assignment for a real client, you will help them to further develop their products and discover new opportunities for the future. You will apply the tools you’ve learned and use prototyping and testing to validate your designs.

1. Evaluate a given product on several engineering aspects using specific analysis tools including: strength and stiffness, environmental footprint, Design for (dis)assembly, functions and risks.
2. Develop optimizations of design or related processes on engineering aspects, e.g.:  strength and stiffness, design, durability, safety measures, test protocols and others.
3. Validate optimisation proposals for given products, using calculations, analysis tools and prototypes to show and quantify the potential value.
4. Present analyses and optimizations in both reports and oral presentations in an unambiguous, reproducible and transparent way.
5. Reflect on the effectiveness of the applied analysis-tools and the optimisation process as a whole.

The following skills are required to be able to enter this minor. When in doubt, contact us and we can see if this minor would suit you.

1. Basic CAD modelling experience.
   1. Being able to create geometrical shaped parts, using fully defined sketches and all basic features for solid modelling (e.g. shell, extrude, sweep, revolve, fillet).
   2. Know how to use  a design tree to make changes to your part without having to rebuild it from scratch (parametric modelling). 
   3. being able to create an assembly-file of a product consisting of several parts. 
2. Basic understanding of statics (e.g. being able to calculate stress and deformation in beams)

1. A Laptop with a working version of Solidworks (other CAD software after approval, license for SolidWorks provided by THUAS).
2. A computer mouse.

study materials will be made available digitally on Brightspace.

Workshops; Each Analysis tool will be introduced with a given case during workshops.

FEM-courses; Simulations in Solidworks will be applied in an assignment during classes the first half of the course.

Guest Lectures; Several companies will give their insights in how they keep their products top-of-the-market.

Group consultations; In groups you will work on an assignment for a client. Fixed tutoring moments are scheduled to support the process and provide feedback.

 

The schedule will be published about a week before the start of the minor program. Please send an email to tis-minoren@hhs.nl if you haven't heard anything by then.

Group assignment 50% (minimum grade 5,0)

Individual assignment 50% (minimum grade 5,0)

 

Minimum pass rate 5,5