I acquired the foundations for my expertise in lightweight design engineering during my studies, first at the TU Berlin, where I studied mechanical engineering (B.Sc.) and later at the TU Chemnitz, where I studied lightweight engineering (M.Sc.) with a focus on simulation and design.

During this time, I acquired in-depth technical expertise and worked on several projects in the areas of design, simulation and optimization. I also got to know the necessary tools (CAD, Matlab, Python etc.) for development work.

Design Engineering

During my career, I realized that design engineering is very easy for me and that I enjoy doing it. As I got to know other design tools later on, I passionately familiarized myself more and more with the functionality of CAD programs as my goal was to make full use of the extensive functions. This led to knowledge of specialized modules and interfaces that included, for example, design with composite materials. The more complex and difficult the tasks became, and the more I reached the limits of what the software could do, the more satisfaction I felt.

To date, I have gained design experience in the fields of mechanical engineering, robotics, aerospace, battery, automotive and rail vehicle design with the design tools CATIA, SolidWorks, Inventor and Solid Edge. Over time, I have expanded my methodological expertise by getting to know different design strategies and recognizing which are best suited to which project requirements. I then work on these with the utmost concentration, attention to detail and structure.

Simulation

During my bachelor’s degree, I was quite fascinated by the idea of modeling functionalities and systems at the computer. As a result, I took classes in the field of simulation early on. There, I learned for example how traffic simulations or molecular dynamics work.

Of course, classic mechanical engineering topics such as Finite Element Analysis played a dominating role during my studies also in the field of simulation. In that matter, I enjoyed modeling various projects over the years: components made of classic metallic, polymer and composite materials.

These include projects on stress and failure analysis, adhesion and friction studies as well as simulations for the production of injection molded components.

Optimization

My first contact with the topic of optimization came in a conversation with a friend during my bachelor’s degree. He told me that there was a methodology that could be used to optimize technical systems based on the evolution theory. Fascinated by the idea, I looked into it and ended up writing my bachelor’s thesis at the Institute of Bionics and Evolutionary Engineering on weight optimizing a truss structure using this method. This laid the foundation for my realization of how powerful heuristics are. I later made the work freely available online.

During my master’s degree, I took up the matter again and developed a much more comprehensive method at the Institute of Lightweight Structures. This involved composite layer stacks in which the optimal orientations of the individual layers had to be found for a given load case. With a solution variety of no less than 9 trillion, this could be solved extremely efficiently and reliably.

In the context of this work, I was then certified as being one of the top 10% of the class.

Testing

Towards the end of my master’s degree, I took up the offer to write my thesis at the Center for Composite Materials in the United States. It was about test-based pre-development for the production of a car B-pillar made entirely of CFRP. The aim was to achieve a high quality for the production and to prove at the end that the B-pillar could withstand the required crash load.

Later I worked again in the field of testing in the context of an innovative honeycomb core of sandwich structures.