PhD Scholarship in Micro Forming Tribology for Robust Production
A PhD student position (3 years) in micro forming tribology for robust production is available at the Section of Manufacturing Engineering, within the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. The position is to be filled 1 October 2020 or soon after that.
The project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark and will be carried out in collaboration with Danish metal forming industry. In high volume production of micro components, fundamental research in micro forming tribology is the key to improve production robustness. The research will involve the establishment of methods for characterizing wear in micro sheet forming and optimization of micro forming tribo-systems for improving robustness and production speed.
Responsibilities and tasks
This PhD project will focus on scale effects in wear occurring in micro sheet metal forming. This requires development of new methods for characterizing wear. Quantifying and monitoring wear in micro sheet metal forming will be carried out at laboratory scale and in industrial production of micro components. It is necessary to establish a framework for identification of characteristic tool/workpiece contact conditions in the production and replication in the laboratory setup. This will allow studying and obtaining fundamental knowledge of micro wear mechanisms and the influence of various parameters in the laboratory. Evaluation of alternative lubricants, local tool geometries in the contact with the workpiece, coatings and process parameters will also be carried out in the laboratory, such that optimized solutions for the industrial production can be suggested. The project includes the verification in the industrial production. The extraction of contact interface conditions in both laboratory experiments and in industrial production will be aided by a combination of process monitoring and numerical simulation of the micro forming processes.
As PhD student, you will:
- select and install transducers in industrial production for extracting as much information as possible leading to identification of contact interface conditions;
- simulate the industrial forming process by commercial FE software to extrapolate the measured information to the contact interfaces;
- develop innovative simulative tests replicating the micro contact conditions at laboratory scale, i.e. as simple tests as possible without losing the characteristics of the contact conditions;
- perform simulative tests to obtain fundamental knowledge on wear mechanisms in micro forming and optimize tribo-systems;
- test the optimized tribo-systems in industrial production;
- be responsible for dissemination of the results in scientific publications and directly to toolmakers and process developers in industry
Candidates should have a two-year master's degree (120 ECTS points) or a similar degree with an academic level equivalent to a two-year master's degree. Preferably, the master’s degree should be within mechanical engineering and include good knowledge about manufacturing methods. Experience with experimental work and/or numerical simulations is also appreciated.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://www.dtu.dk/english/about/job-and-career/vacant-positions/job?id=d91da4e2-41ad-4922-a79f-3e131da0a125