Digital Engineering
Course of study
- Nachhaltige Verfahrens- und Umwelttechnik (VTU)
- Energieprozesstechnik (EPT)
- Chemieingenieurwesen: Molekulare und strukturelle Produktgestaltung (CIW)
- Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen Verfahrens- und Energietechnik
- Chemical and Energy Engineering (CEE)
- Process Safety and Environmental Engineering (PSEE)
Abstract
In process engineering, apparatus and processes of widely varying technical complexity are in daily use in industry worldwide. The Faculty of Process and Systems Engineering therefore aims to qualify its students for industrial practice at a high academic level, offering theoretical lectures together with applied seminars and practical laboratory work. However, the variety of processes and equipment is far too large to teach every aspect in the time available — and as student numbers grow, practical laboratory work reaches its limits.
Digital engineering offers a way around both constraints, and brings students into contact with industrial processes early in their studies: processes are visualized and become accessible in virtual apparatus. The goal of this student project is exactly that — visualizing apparatus and processes at different levels of complexity and detail, from dryers and reaction columns to batteries and electrolyzers.
Aims and Scope
The aim of the module is the development of apps that are afterwards used in digital teaching to visualize processes in process engineering. This is achieved through interdisciplinary work between students of the Faculty of Computer Science (FIN) and the Faculty of Process and Systems Engineering (FVST). The computer science students carry a higher workload for the development of the apps, so the two groups are graded differently.
The process engineering students apply their knowledge of the processes to support development both conceptually and substantively. The main challenge is not to employ theoretical knowledge but to work out the technical detail that visualization requires: every physical, chemical and instrumentation quantity has to be supplied in a form that computer science students — who are not familiar with process engineering — can turn into a virtual process. The process engineering students then accompany and supervise the implementation throughout.
The joint result is evaluated and presented at the end of the semester, and the implementation is documented continuously and summarized in a report.
The specific tasks can be summarized as:
- Application-oriented work
- Interdisciplinary work
- Organisation of the work in a team
- Targeted, time-optimised work
- Summary of the work in the form of a report
- Presentation of the results
- Evaluation of the app
Contents
- Selection of the process
- Written description of the process, including the physical, chemical and technical data of interest
- Breakdown into sub-processes
- Selection of the process parameters and summary of the required data
- Conception of the app, for example simple visualization or implementation of process conditions
- Continuous support of the app implementation
- Documentation of the implementation
- Presentation of the results
- Evaluation and functional test of the app
Organisation
| Teaching format | Interdisciplinary teamwork between FIN and FVST students, in the manner of agile software development: meetings every two weeks, sub-tasks presented in sprints, closing colloquium with presentation and evaluation of the apps, plus a report |
|---|---|
| Workload | 3 SWS — 22 h contact time (also possible by video conference), 110 h private study |
| Examination | Presentation of the app and report |
| Credits | 4 CP |
| Language | English and German, bilingual if required |
| Prerequisites | Basics of process engineering |
| Responsible | Dr.-Ing. Nicole Vorhauer-Huget (FVST) Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Gunter Saake and Dr.-Ing. David Broneske (FIN) |
Former projects
Results from previous years:
A full list of the projects is available in the project repository.
Interested?
Places are limited, so early enquiries are advisable. Contact Dr.-Ing. Nicole Vorhauer-Huget, or see our other teaching and thesis topics.