"“I dream of becoming a Finite Element Method guru"
During my master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, I became intrigued by simulations using the Finite Element Method (FEM); I wanted to learn more about the technique. My favorite part of my master's thesis: my research in which I tried to tease out the performance of Timoshenko beam elements in a FEM study of a vascular stent made of a shape memory alloy. Since the load cases are complex and the material model for the shape memory alloy has many parameters, it forced me to understand different components of an FEM simulation, such as meshing, material model, boundary conditions, and solver. Moreover, for meshing the stent geometry using beam elements, I had to be creative in programming a preprocessor in Python. That was fun to do.
My work was limited to investigating a beam model of a small section of a stent. However, the gain in computational efficiency over the standard solid elements promises wider application of FEM simulation in the design of new stents.
TU/e gives you access to various high-end software such as Siemens NX, Marc Mentat and ANSYS. This allows you to practice with otherwise quite expensive software reserved only for industry specialists. I am currently working as an FEM specialist at VDL in Eindhoven.Despite the fact that the software that we use at my employer is different from that used at the university, my profound knowledge meant that I quickly got used to it. My mentor coached me during my thesis, teaching me how to employ FEM in an academic setting. I found this very valuable, as the impact of learning from your mistakes is significantly larger in a commercial setting.