Internship / Working student / Master Thesis student (m/f/d) Systematic Material Selection for the Sustainable Design of Switchgear Components

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Your role and responsibilities

Switchgear in medium voltage grids are systems controlling and protecting a large variety of grid assets. As they are very broadly used and in very different applications (from substations in urban and rural areas to wind farms or industrial plants) there are high demands on their reliability and safety. Furthermore, such systems have a very long lifetime of about 30 and up to 50 years in extreme cases. Considering this background, sustainability in the design of these devices and especially in their mechanical components has long been seen as a minor issue compared to its functional safety and reliability. With changing regulations and new customer demand the question of how to improve switchgear design towards more sustainable material choices arises.
In the intended thesis, a study on material choices considering cost and sustainability aspects for mechanically loaded parts shall be conducted. To this end, the student will focus on a systematic material selection, but also simulate loaded parts with a FEM software and modify their geometry in CAD. A special aspect of this thesis is that in all these steps, care is taken to ensure that both economic efficiency and sustainability aspects are already favored through the selection of materials and processes in the early design phase. As a result, the systematic material selection should take the whole life cycle of the product into account. Eventually, the results of this thesis will contribute to a new engineering design method within a larger project at the German Research Center of ABB in Mannheim in cooperation with several universities.
We expect you to have the willingness to tackle difficult problems and proactiveness to come up with new ideas.
As part of our project team, you should have high motivation to get acquainted with an unknown topic, interest in code development, and independently drive your tasks.

Qualifications for the role

• You are studying for a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Environmental Engineering, Material Sciences or similar field.
• You are a good communicator, you have sound English skills in speaking and writing as required by an international team.
• You are interested in sustainable design, material selection and solving complex industrial problems.
• You have a strong background in material sciences and material selection.
• You should preferably be familiar with design methodology and material processing/manufacturing that would be a plus.
• You have experience in CAD software, e.g., SolidWorks. Experience in Ansys Granta Selector and/or FEM simulation would be a big plus.

More about us

We believe in fairness, so interns who join us will benefit from our expertise as they expand their own knowledge. We give you the scope to try things out for yourself and obtain practical experience. Your time is valuable, so you will receive appropriate remuneration for the duration of the internship. Please note that internships are generally limited to six months, while voluntary internships during a bachelor course are for a maximum of three months. Please state whether you are applying for a voluntary or mandatory internship or master’s thesis student and be sure to enclose your certificate of enrolment. In the case of mandatory internships, please include the corresponding extract from your university’s internship guidelines. Interested? Then we look forward to receiving your informative application (cover letter, CV, certificate of enrolment, current transcript of grades and other supporting documents) through our online careers tool.