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Cambridge University

Symposium poster session, April 3, 2009

"Enhancing Teaching and Learning"

All participants were invited to present a poster during the Symposium. The title of the poster session was "Enhancing Teaching and Learning". We invited posters that described any novel or interesting approach to the teaching of materials and processes in engineering, science, processing, or design. The aim of the session was to facilitate networking and exchange of ideas between participants. The posters did not need to describe use of CES EduPack.

Abstracts

1. EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION IN MATERIALS SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

M. Segarra, I. Fernández, M. Martínez

University of Barcelona

Following the directives established in the framework of the European Space for Higher Education, University teaching should implement new teaching methodologies, by which the student can be involved within the learning-teaching process. Teaching Innovation by experiential learning at different Universities has been centered on the creation and improvement of teaching material using new technologies, mainly the Internet, that can be empowered and favored, both by the creation of innovative teaching and by the use that can be made of it. Since 2003, a group of lecturers from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, at the University of Barcelona, has been working on the implementation of new technologies to complement theory-based teaching in classroom and laboratories, and to ensure and enhance quality in the teaching process. Different projects have been carried out, some of them funded by the University of Barcelona and the Catalan Government, which have led to the development of interactive software, that can be used together with other existing software such as CES Edupack, in Materials Science undergraduate courses. These are: a test for self-evaluation (AUTOMAT), consisting on multi-choice questions implemented in the Moodle platform; a metals and alloys data base (MICROMET), containing nomenclature, composition, classification, microstructure, properties, phase diagrams and thermal treatments diagrams for some selected metallic systems that students find in the laboratory; other similar data bases, but for ceramics (PROCER) and polymers (POLIMAT); an interactive tool designed as a web application to learn to select the best material for a specific application in a kitchen (DEIWEB), following the methodology for selection in mechanical design. These applications enable students to consolidate part of the concepts acquired during theoretical classroom teaching of the subject of Materials Science. The department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering is now trying to implement a flexible learning classroom with tutorial exercises available to the students. Students are motivated and interested in the use of these tools because of its inherent novelty and to the fact that allows both self and experiential learning.

2. COMPUTERISED “MATERIAL – SHAPE” SELECTION, APPLIED IN THE CASE OF SOME CONSTRUCTION ELEMENTS

Shpresa Caslli, Emil Lamani, Dervish Elezi

Polytechnic Universty of Tirana, Albania.

The aim of this paper is the presentation of a computer-aided approach for materials-shape selection, applied in the case of some construction elements. This approach is compared to the traditional engineering design practice for such elements, in order to test its validity and to bring out some important features. The CES software is used to perform screening of the structural sections database and ranking of the most appropriate candidates for two priorities: decreasing mass and cost reduction. These priorities. or design objectives, are formalized in four performance indices, enabling a multiple criteria selection of the optimal beam section.

3. PARTICIPATION OF THE TECHNICAL SOCIETIES IN THE DEFINITION OF ENGINEERING PROJECT COURSES

Professor Sylvain Turenne

Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada

In Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, students in materials science and mechanical engineering programs have to complete a design project based on materials and process selection for particular applications. In order to propose novel projects, we often consult the technical societies who provide us with interesting suggestions to improve their performance. Most of these societies have to compete every year around the world on various subjects: a canoe made of concrete, a man-powered submarine, mini-baja, SAE formula racing car, air plane-cargo, vehicle powered by photo-voltaic. The poster will present some examples of actual projects that have been solved by using CES.

4. INTEGRITY OF THE BOREHOLE DURING CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE CCS

Anna Pfennig

FHTW University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

With gas emission, particularly CO2, being one of today’s most serious environmental hazards, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is becoming more and more important to mitigate climate change. Carbon dioxide corrosion, which easily causes failure of pipelines and wells, is a well acknowledged problem in the oil and gas production and will become an issue when compressing emission gasses in deep geological layers. The CO2-corrosion in geothermal energy production is sensitively dependent on environmental conditions like temperature, CO2 partial pressure flow conditions and protective corrosion scale. In Ketzin, Germany, northwest of the capital Berlin, the first on-shore CO2-storage site (CO2-SINK) in saline aquifer water was established in October 2007. There is no experience of the corrosion behaviour for saline waters with the given conditions of Ketzin.

This poster gives the opportunity to present worldwide acknowledged activities to prevent the emission of greenhouse gases, where new limits of power generation plants, transport systems, borehole engineering, geological reservoir modelling and engineering as well as the safety aspects have to be met. Within material science this allows to comprise materials used in the CCS-chain. These are for example materials used in power plants, high-temperature materials and high temperature corrosion as well as CO2-corrosion aspects in saline water, cost optimization, and discuss materials used for borehole engineering such as steels and CO2-protecting ceramics.

As an example for Ketzin the 1%Cr-steel 1.7225, AISI 4140, 42CrMo4 and the high alloyed 13%Cr martensitic stainless steel 1.4043, AISI 420, X46Cr13 are presented and the corrosion kinetics and complicated microstructure are demonstrated to recommend actions to secure the borehole integrity.

5. Innovative Methods in Materials Science Education

Miklós Tisza, Maria Baán Kocsis, Maria Berkes Maros

University of Miskolc, Hungary

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Miskolc is one of the main centres in Hungary for Computer Aided Engineering - both for education and research. It covers a wide range of Computer Aided Engineering fields including Computer Aided Materials Selection, Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing, mainly in the field of Materials Processing Technologies (metal forming, heat-treatment and welding). In this paper, we give only a short description of the Computer Aided Materials Selection.
We will focus on two main applications: use of CES EduPack in training graduate and undergraduate students; and application of CES EduPack in courses and projects developed for am e-learning environment.

The main education activity of our Department is training mechanical engineering students both at BSc and at MSc level. Since materials selection is a topic of primary interest for mechanical engineering, we have used CES EduPack already for several years. This software and the selection philosophy behind it provide an excellent opportunity for students to understand the basic concept of material selection. It also provides a great amount of valuable information on materials properties. This package can be used to teach how design requirements can be translated into material specifications, or how to create material indices for various loading conditions and application purposes. Also, the application of the material property charts are extremely useful particularly in the conceptual design phase to understand what classes of materials can be used for given purposes and what is the optimum solution. After going through these basic steps, each student has to solve a unique project similar to the case studies described in the book Materials Selection in Mechanical Design. Some examples of these projects will be illustrated in our poster.

The other main field of application is based on ODL courses. Our first ODL course offered for practising engineers in industry was supported by a PHARE project, entitled Advanced Engineering. This bilingual course was tailored to meet the specific training needs of the region, recognising that practising engineers need not only professional refreshment courses, but also and even more importantly improvement of their technical language skills in English.

Four other, EU supported content development projects (Establishment of new courses on Materials Engineering in Hungary, TEMPUS joint project, 1994-97; Innovate International On-Line Vocational Training in Surface Engineering, Leonardo pilot project, 2000-2004;  e2ngineering, Development and testing of multilingual e-learning materials and courses in advanced engineering subjects, Leonardo project, 2004-2006; MinSE – European Master in Surface Engineering, ERASMUS project, 2006-2009) also focused on hot topics in Engineering education and e-learning methodology and CES EduPack provided a good application tool in these projects as well. In all these projects wide range of training materials have been developed as more or less independent, self-standing training units – “bite-sized” and reusable elements of knowledge transfer.

6. ENHANCED LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS: MATERIALS SELECTION FOR THE BICYCLE SPOKES

Dr Fraser Buchanan,
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Queen’s University, Belfast

Students are more likely to learn, and retain the knowledge, if they have the opportunity to actually apply the academic knowledge to solve practical problems.  This is the basis of the CDIO Initiative (www.cdi.org).  CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) is a description of the product or system life-cycle that professional engineers have responsibility for.  A number of leading engineering schools from across the world are collaborating in the CDIO Initiative, which is seeking to reform engineering education. 

The aim of this project was to enhance the learning experience of Stage 1 Mechanical Engineering Students by incorporating a practical based project as part of an ‘Introduction to Engineering’ module.  This study was mainly concerned with material selection however other skills and knowledge are required for the successful completion of the project.  It gives participating students a greater appreciation of how different areas of engineering combine and gives them an opportunity to put theory into practice.

7. APPLICATION OF CES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ZAGREB, CROATIA

Student’s mentor: Prof. Tomislav Filetin, PhD

Papers edited for poster presentation by: Irena Zmak, PhD

The poster presents some examples of material selection done by using Cambridge Engineering Selector and other material selection methods. Presented examples include: bow (weapon), kitchen pan, gas turbine blades, and cue stick. All authors of student papers were graduate students from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture. Student papers were also presented in the class as a portion of the oral examination on the Materials Selection Course.

8. MANUDIRECT – AN EXAMPLE OF GRANTA’S COLLABORATION WITH INDUSTRY AND ACADEMIA

Dr Charlie Bream, Granta Design

MANUDURECT is a European Nanotechnologies Project funded by the European Union's Sixth Framework Program. The project aims to provide a new platform for manufacturing with resolution better than 200 micrometres, based on high productivity, high resolution, direct, one step, laser sintering using metals and ceramic materials. Such technology would have a broad range of microengineering and biomedical applications. The MANUDIRECT Consortium includes academic and industrial partners from Italy, Germany, UK, Spain, Romania, Poland, Cyprus, and Belgium with commercial participants including Granta, Siemens, EADS Deutschland, and MTU.

Granta is providing software systems that enable the consortium partners to manage all materials data generated during the project in a single, collaborative, online system. Granta is also developing software tools to model the behaviour of laser-sintered nano-materials. Such tools will enable researchers to investigate potential materials that may offer the desired combination of properties for their application, helping them to focus on manufacture and testing of the best candidates.

This poster, first presented at the project update meeting in Santa Maria di Sala, Italy, October 2008, provides an update on several key project tasks:

• Materials selection case studies
• Database development – a system to manage and share the project data
• A Composite Synthesizer – new software to predict the properties of composite materials of intereste to the project

9. IMPLEMENTATION OF ACTIVE LEARNING USING MATERIAL SELECTION TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS

S. Naher and L. Looney, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Dublin City University, Ireland

The aim of the current work is to implement and evaluate an active learning approach in materials engineering modules through the use of students’ own case studies. The case studies are intended to build understanding of materials selection techniques and tools. Research has shown that engineering students in particular rely heavily on ‘learning through doing’, and this study was designed to align the teaching mode with that strength.

At Dublin City University, students study the approach to material selection developed by Mike Ashby, and use the CES software in both second year and final year modules. In the second year, students learn the technical steps of selecting materials and fourth/final year students focus on eco-selection of materials. Both groups were given the assignment of writing a case study, finding appropriate materials by implementing the procedures taught in the lectures. Several case studies are available to students (with solutions) in the text book Materials Selection for Mechanical Design. However, despite exposure to these examples, understanding of the concepts was weak in previous years. The ‘blank canvas’ case study exercise was aimed at changing this. Students were subsequently asked to complete questionnaires about how they approached the assignment, and what benefit they thought it brought, to evaluate its relevance and were also invited to make general comments.

Despite some differences between senior and more junior students, overall the students strongly agreed that writing their own case study helped them to understand course concepts and materials. Compared to experience from previous years, the quality of much of the work submitted was high, and students engaged more actively in trying to gain competence at the techniques. The more experienced students handled the challenge better, and were more positive about its value. There was reasonable correlation between time spent on the task and performance mark, and they did not look to the internet to solve the challenge for them. For second year students, the time spent on the assignment did not correlating with their performance. It is clear from the questionnaires that they were unsure about how to start the assignment, were not sure about the solution and even where to look for the solution. Many wasted time surfing the web for inspiration. Feedback from the questionnaires emphasise that it is particularly important for second year students to give very clear instructions, to structure the assignment, and provide a starting point. Learning is more efficient if the lecturer points out that class note and the text book are the key to making progress, that there is not a ‘right’ answer and, even if there were, it is unlikely to be found on the web. These were implemented for the following class, and second year performance improved.