PhD Position – Meshless Simulation of Manufacturing Processes in Zürich

The Institute of Machine Tools and Manufacturing (IWF) under the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT) is an international leading research group on machine tools and in the field of production engineering. Recent topics of research focus on novel technologies such as additive manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big Data analysis and Industry 4.0.

TMetal cutting remains one of the most, if not “the” most, important manufacturing processes in any developed nation. Thus, it is of utmost importance to be able to predict the outcome of such processes and to gain insight into the underlying physics. Computer simulation is a valuable tool for both mentioned purposes. Current simulation models are hampered in their efficiency because they rely on classical FEM paradigms, which require constant remeshing in the face of the extremely large deformations encountered during cutting operations. Therefore, a novel simulation tool using meshfree methods was developed at IWF. This PhD position is concerned with extending this tool with novel features, ranging from advanced material models to extended applications and state-of-the-art numerical algorithms.