Search results

Continuous technological advances keep challenging current and future engineers to anticipate and adapt to the new trends and paradigms that are expected to take place in a near future. One of such paradigms is the Industry 4.0 that encompasses the promise of a new industrial revolution based on the interconnectivity of people and systems to communicate, analyse and use information related to industrial processes. New challenges, as well as new opportunities, will rise in this digital landscape, demanding from future engineers the ability to adapt and grow in such ground-breaking environments. With such dynamic changes taking place in the current and future industries, engineering education has to adapt and prepare future graduates to work and function in these demanding environments. The set of skills envisaged to be held by future engineers is the ability to work and collaborate using digital means of participation as well as the ability to effectively use intercultural communicative skills. To this end, an exploratory study was conducted among different European Higher Education Engineering Schools to integrate a project with common aims and goals, resulting in various collaborative engineering activities that were designed to be carried out by undergraduate industrial and mechanical engineering students to further improve their learning outcomes and to acquire, or improve on, dedicated intercultural, communicative and colaborative skills. Following both quantitative and qualitative approaches, this study combined different types of data and methods of analysis in order to provide an exploratory account of the envisaged findings.

In order to understand the potential of Online Learning Environment tools and resources in Engineering Education, a project on the use of dedicated educational strategies has been carried-out in various European Schools of Engineering to improve students’ engagement on different forms of participation and to enhance their learning outcomes. This study focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools while teaching Manufacturing Processes to Industrial Engineering students of a Higher Education Portuguese Polytechnic Institute during a full semester. Cumulatively to students’ perceptions, data was collected and assessed to infer about two main research questions: “Are engineering students able to use efficiently online learning tools to enhance their autonomous learning process?” and “Can engineering students work collaboratively using online tools towards achieving common learning goals?”. Preliminary findings showed that students managed to efficiently use the proposed online collaborative learning tools during the course. However, students preferred the individual learning tools and processes to working and learning collaboratively from and with each other.

Within a pulp industry production process, a drop in the performance of a wood log rotary debarker was identified. Such loss of performance was due to the occurrence of excessive wear of the device’s cutting blades, requiring their regular and premature replacement. The material used to manufacture the cutting blades, Hardox 500, has characteristics considered adequate for the required use. However, it was concluded that the blade manufacturing process degraded its mechanical properties, leading to its premature wear when placed in service. The present study intends to propose, characterize, and validate an alternative cutting process to manufacture the debarker’s cutting blades. Abrasive waterjet cutting technology was proposed to produce the cutting blades. The suitability of this manufacturing process is discussed considering the specified geometry and the material characteristics of the resulting cutting blades.