TEACHING EXPERIENCE WITH CES EDUPACK SOFTWARE IN MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

The CES EduPack software is a powerful tool designed to improve teaching about the selection of materials, manufacturing processes and products by incorporating a comprehensive database of standardized properties of materials and processes [1]. Among other properties allows the possibility of collating, quickly and easily available information on a large number of properties of different materials to compare and select the most suitable for our purposes and forming processes thereof.

The goal of any project design and selection of a manufacturing process is to optimize production and this includes many aspects among which are the available equipment, manufacturing methods known and the selected material, and it is precisely this last point which will determine much of the manufacturing processes required to obtain the expected results.

With the use of this tool is intended that students acquire skills in its use, to solve the problems and become aware of the importance of selection both material and the suitable manufacturing processes for the proposed product. The development of teaching practices has as main objective is to complete and complement the concepts of the theory developed in class by solving practical cases. Specifically, to evaluate this tool as an educational resource, experiences were performed which gave us information on its effectiveness in the course of Science and Engineering of Materials in the Degrees of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering of the Higher Polytechnics Schools of Jaen and Linares, both belonging to the University of Jaen. During the practical classes the students were taught to apply the more basic software tools, the most common commands and to apply, as a support tool, the initial manual implemented by the software. From there are solved and they raise a number of case studies in the classroom with rising difficulty as the students gain skill with the software and finally given freedom to pose real situations and practical cases to be resolved together. This has led to the development of a collection of exercises and practical cases with different degrees of difficulty very useful for teaching subsequent courses and has the advantage of being able to expand and updated over time.

At the end of the practical sessions the students were asked their opinion on the experiment carried out using a survey and the results were very satisfactory since for all students experience was rated as positive or very positive in general. For 100% of the students, the software used was very useful for the acquisition of key concepts and compression of the theoretical contents of the subject. In addition more than 92% of surveyed considered adequate the methodology used for the development of practices and almost 60% felt that the knowledge developed during the practices had helped them much or enough to complement the formation of theoretical and practical areas, and to better understand the contents thereof.

In conclusion, we can establish that the use of CES EduPack software is very useful to strengthen the concepts developed in the theory lectures putting into practice whatever learned by the students in the development of new products, manufacturing processes and optimize them.

References:
[1] CES EduPack 2015, Granta Design, Cambridge (2015), www.grantadesign.com.