Course Contents To achieve ambitious sustainability goals that will become necessary in the future, we need to utilise lightweight materials with
reduced environmental footprint more efficiently. Their structuring to prescribes load paths and manufacturing with minimal
material waste will become key.
This course focuses on studying the basics physics of additive manufacturing processes. The course covers the areas of
biologically-inspired materials and processing, topology optimisation for design and explores emerging topics in additive
manufacturing.
During the course, students will gain an overview of existing additive manufacturing technologies of metals, ceramics, polymers,
living and composite materials.
Working in small groups, students will study self-assigned research topics and apply the acquired knowledge for a design
assignment of a structural component. The understanding of the manufacturing process and the design knowledge, applying
numerical optimisation methods, will lead to the creation of an own design which will be manufactured. All parts will be tested
and evaluated under different criteria and critically assessed with their future perspective in mind.
Study Goals The course consists on the one part of lectures to allow the student to understand the fundamentals of materials processing as
well as the design and optimisation methods relating to additive manufacturing. Selected guest lecture(s) will highlight how this
knowledge is applied in specific fields or applications. In parallel to the lectures, a design assignment for a lightweight structure
will help the students to explore processing knowledge and freedom associated to the design and optimisation methods to create
an own structural design which will be tested in a final design competition.
