Additive Manufacturing

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 prescribed 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.