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Materials
Education News
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2.
Short course dates for 2007 - join us in Orlando
or Cambridge
Granta offers one-day training events aimed at teaching staff in universities and colleges and led by Professor Mike Ashby of Cambridge University. The first dates for 2007 are now confirmed.
The courses present recent advances in materials and process selection, with specific emphasis on their use in education. You will discover a wide range of solutions for class teaching, student projects, and research. The course will use the latest version of the revolutionary CES EduPack software and its accompanying teaching resources, mixing lectures with interactive hands-on time with the software. |
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Ashby Design Award result
The winner of the annual Ashby Design Award has been announced. This year’s materials selection problem was the most challenging to date. Contestants were asked to take the role of a consultant choosing a material with very low thermal conductivity, but able to withstand 15,000 psi of pressure. The application, which was in a medical device, involved hot liquid flowing through a tube. A key objective was to minimize heat loss. The challenge stimulated an excellent response: 30 submissions from a number of countries. The Award this year goes, by a narrow margin, to Eduardo Avancini Alves of the Federal Univerisity of Rio Grande do Sol, Brazil, for his innovative exploration of tubular structures in nature as a source of inspiration, and for his competent analysis of the problem and his use of CES software to devise a steel-mesh reinforced polyurethane composite tube that meets the design requirements. Congratulations to Eduardo and to Professor Wilson Kindlein Jr. who guided the project. |
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4.
A new materials textbook from Mike Ashby
Materials: Engineering, Science, Processing and Design delivers a proven, systematic approach to understanding and selecting materials and processes. Taking a design-led approach, Ashby, Shercliff and Cebon draw on their extensive experience of teaching materials to undergraduates. Matched to a wide variety of courses, this is the first textbook dedicated to undergraduate engineering students taking materials courses. The book is complemented by the CES EduPack software. Combined, the book and software are a uniquely powerful materials teaching and learning resource. The book will be priced at £29.99 / €43.95 / $74.95 and publish in February 2007. Visit www.textbooks.elsevier.com/ashby for more information. |
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More on new books - share your favorite resources!
Another new book covering materials selection, this time in German, is Methodik der Werkstoffauswahl - der systematische Weg zum richtigen Material (Material Selection Methodologies - the systematic path to the right material) by Martin Reuter of the Fachhochschule Hannover. The author describes in detail the process of targeted material selection, exploring the relevant technical, economic, and non-technical aspects. The selection of an optimal material is supported through check lists, material property charts, design parameters, and web resources. The book is published by Fachbuchverlag Leipzig im Carl Hanser Verlag and will be available in December. If you know of a new book or teaching resource that would be useful to the global community that reads Granta Materials Education News, why not contact us? We could publicise it via this newsletter and help other materials and process educators. |
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6. Eco-design software and conference Eco-design is an increasingly important application area for teaching and for the use of CES EduPack. Eco-materials, materials with reduced environmental impact, are critically important to sustainable development. Granta is supporting the 8th International Conference on Eco-Materials (ICEM8) at Brunel University, UK, July 9-11, 2007. This event will enable the worldwide academic and industrial community to learn about cutting-edge developments, address new challenges, share solutions, and discuss future research directions. Granta software allows researchers, teachers, and students to explore environmentally-relevant properties, such as the energy embedded in producing a material, and to apply this information in design projects. More on CES EduPack editions — including the Eco Edition for teaching of eco-selection More on Granta's EcoSelector software for research & development |
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7. Head of department web events Professor Mike Ashby will host two web events for program directors, heads of department, and academic deans in university engineering faculties. The CES EduPack is being adopted as a strategic teaching tool by a growing number of universities to support teaching from first year through to post-graduate studies across a broad range of courses. These seminars will provide an overview of the CES EduPack as a resource for your whole faculty.
If you are a program director, head of department, or dean, please join us. Alternatively, why not pass details to your department head? Use of CES EduPack across a faculty benefits existing users by enabling them to develop links with other parts of the curriculum, to share costs and benefit from a lower cost-per-user, and to simplify licence agreements, ordering, and installation. |
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Sign up for these upcoming web seminars to find out more about materials and process education software and its use in practical teaching.
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To see who is using CES EduPack, and how, visit the Granta website. We continue to update the user reports section, with the latest contributions coming from Dr.-Ing. Michael Schmidt-Kretschmer at the Technische Universität Berlin and Professor Dr. Ralph Spolenak at ETH Zurich. Dr. Schmidt-Kretschmer says "The Engineering Design and Methodology Division has incorporated CES EduPack into its Reverse Engineering course, receiving a very positive response from the students. In this course a range of different products are analyzed and the potential for improving their design is studied. Materials selection plays a critical role in this process. The CES EduPack was applied directly by students, without any prior knowledge of the program. Their understanding of materials property charts was enhanced, as was basic comprehension of materials selection." Professor Spolenak comments "Not only did the students begin to solve material selection examples unprompted, they also, independent of these excercises, researched new materials. The in-depth background science in the CES EduPack was particularly useful, as it enabled students to refer to the theoretical foundations of a property directly within the program." More reports and reviews from CES EduPack users. Why not tell us how you are using CES EduPack? Contact us. |
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