Peter puttkammer, bachelor's assignment, engineering fluid dynamics group
Hi, my name is Peter Puttkammer. I did my Bachelor’s assignment at the research group in Engineering Fluid Dynamics, here at the University of Twente.
The title of my Bachelor’s report was: Boundary Layer over a flat plate. A boundary layer is a phenomenon occurring for all fluids caused by the property called viscosity. Put a knife in a honey pot and you know honey will stick to the knife. This is because honey has a high viscosity. For air this works exactly the same; an air stream around any object (in my case a flat plate) will stick a bit to this object, only a lot less than honey since air has a low viscosity. This thin layer of air which is influenced by the object is called the boundary layer. The manipulation of the boundary layer can be of interest for studies on efficiency or drag of wings of aircrafts or blades of wind turbines.
In my Bachelor’s assignment I investigated the boundary layer analytically, numerically and experimentally. My researched showed that measurements on the boundary layer could be fitted to the theory, which is of interest to test theories for manipulating the boundary layer in practice.
I already knew that I wanted to do the master’s programme in Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Fluid dynamics after finishing Advanced Technology. This because I enjoyed courses like Introduction to fluid dynamics and Aerodynamics most in my Bachelor’s programme. After a chat with Prof. Hoeijmakers I was really enthusiastic about the possibilities to combine theory and experiments in my bachelor assignment, so that sealed the case.
In the first part of the assignment I was reading literature about the subject and was busy working out the details for the calculations on the boundary layer. After a couple of weeks, I was done with the theoretical part and started the experiments in the wind tunnel at the university.
I really enjoyed the combination of the theoretical part and the experiments. Of course, sometimes things do not go as you plan them, but overall I liked the Bachelor’s assignment a lot.
Lynn Maria Schneider, bachelor's assignment, inorganic membranes group
Hi, my name is Lynn Maria Schneider. I carried out my Bachelor’s assignment at the Inorganic Membranes group at the University of Twente.
My subject was Hybrid polyPOSS amide membranes. Membrane technology nicely combines two important fields of chemical engineering, the materials as well as the process aspects. Since I was willing to qualify for both of these tracks in my Master’s programme and membrane technology has become a promising separation technology, I chose my Bachelor’s assignment in the field of membranes.
Hybrid membranes show outstanding material properties which are appropriate for membrane application. In hybrid materials, organic and inorganic moieties are combined which I found very interesting and thus I decided to go for this assignment. The supervisor related to this assignment was structured and organized which supported my choice for this particular Bachelor’s assignment. Looking back I think the supervisor plays an important role.
It is difficult to say what a normal day looked like because each day was different. In my case, the Bachelor’s assignment was split into two parts. In the first part, I did experiments in the laboratory and concomitantly some literature study. In the second part I processed and analyzed my results and repeated some odd measurements. In general, I liked the entire Bachelor’s assignment because of working independently and being part of a research group.