Abstract:

The development of a Final Degree Project, which has to prove the knowledge obtained by the student, is compulsory in all the bachelor’s engineering degrees belonging to the Bologna Declaration. In the case of the students developing its project in the group LEPAMAP from the Chemical Engineering Department of the University of Girona, the project consists in experimental projects, more specifically in the development of new sustainable polymeric or paper-based materials. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 crisis in Spain led to a strict lockdown, stopping all the student’s project in progress at the beginning of March 2020. The experimental work will continue at the end of June, however, the projects have limited data to be defended, and if the student wanted to continue its academic studies without losing one year, it needed to be presented in September. These conditions limited the number of results that could be obtained during the time devoted to the development of the project and a new design of the project was required. In that new plan, it was necessary to introduce digital technologies to generate the appropriate results.

The project analyzed in this work was focused on the production of new nanocomposites materials for food packaging. The initial planning considered the study of the mechanical, thermal, water uptake and barrier properties of the new materials and the development of a prototype food tray product by a thermoforming process. However, by the time of the lockdown, only the nanocomposites production and the mechanical characterization was done. In the dubiety of the situation, the state of the project development was the only clear part: thermal studies could be performed in a short time if the lockdown finished previously to the defense date, but barrier and water uptake properties and the prototyping required longtime processes and needed to be replaced. It was necessary to move to digital platforms to solve the lack of results. Thus, a different approach of the prototyping was proposed. A modelling simulation of a commercial food tray was building up in SolidWorks® software. A finite elements assay was performed in the simulation with common plastic materials used in food packaging from the database of the software and with the produced nanocomposites. The results allow the student to evaluate the performance of its materials in the product without the necessity to produce a prototype. Besides, the software has the sustainability packaging that led to analyses of the CO2 and energy fingerprint of the product simulated. The software was available for all the students of the university and engineer students have used it during its bachelor. The obtained results make up for the lack of experimental results while allowing the student to demonstrate the acquired capacities during its bachelor.

Keywords:

Digital Approach, Digital Resources.