Department Production Technology and Organization   Mechanical Engineering Design

Professor: dr.ir. K. van der Werff.

Designing a machine is a creative process consisting of ideation, evaluation and communication of engineering solutions. The section Mechanical Engineering Design is involved with the methodology of design. The existing methodologies of design are rather abstract theories. For that reason our research is as much as possible connected to problems occurring in practical situations.

An apprenticeship in a company is a part of your final study. The research tasks will be directed to one or more aspects of mechanical engineering design. Eventually this means that you will be asked to make a CAD implementation for a company, in other cases you will have to develop a design tool for a specific class of problems.

At the time we are much involved in the conceptual design of machines.

Some important topics are:

Design calculations and procedures, engineering knowledge and databases, geometric modelling and engineering, physical modelling and integration of CAD, design process and planning.

The compulsory courses include application directed computer science courses. Within the course part the accent can be on computer science and/or mechanical engineering. Typical CAD aspects appear in the research tasks.