Refine
Year of publication
Institute
- Fachbereich Energietechnik (1116) (remove)
Language
- English (589)
- German (524)
- Multiple languages (1)
- Dutch (1)
- Spanish (1)
Document Type
- Article (604)
- Conference Proceeding (263)
- Book (126)
- Part of a Book (84)
- Doctoral Thesis (10)
- Conference: Meeting Abstract (8)
- Report (7)
- Other (4)
- Talk (3)
- Diploma Thesis (2)
Keywords
- Blitzschutz (18)
- Lightning protection (11)
- Earthquake (5)
- Diversity Management (4)
- Energy storage (4)
- Power plants (4)
- Risikomanagement (4)
- Seismic design (4)
- reinforced concrete (4)
- Associated liquids (3)
Engineers and therefore engineering education are challenged by the increasing complexity of questions to be answered globally. The education of future engineers therefore has to answer with curriculums that build up relevant skills. This chapter will give an example how to bring engineering and social responsibility successful together to build engineers of tomorrow. Through the integration of gender and diversity perspectives, engineering research and teaching is expanded with new perspectives and contents providing an important potential for innovation. Aiming on the enhancement of engineering education with distinctive competencies beyond technical expertise, the teaching approach introduced in the chapter represents key factors to ensure that coming generations of engineers will be able to meet the requirements and challenges a changing globalized world holds for them. The chapter will describe how this approach successfully has been implemented in the curriculum in engineering of a leading technical university in Germany.
Engineers are of particular importance for the societies of tomorrow. The big social challenges society has to cope with in future, can only be mastered, if engineers link the development and innovation process closely with the requirements of people. As a result, in the frame of the innovation process engineers have to design and develop products for diverse users. Therefore, the consideration of diversity in this process is a core competence engineers should have. Implementing the consideration of diverse requirements into product design is also linked to the development of sustainable products and thus leads to social responsible research and development, the core concept formulated by the EU.
For this reason, future engineers should be educated to look at the technical perspectives of a problem embedded in the related questions within societies they are developing their artefacts for. As a result, the aim of teaching engineering should be to prepare engineers for these requirements and to draw attention to the diverse needs in a globalized world.
To match the competence profiles of future engineers to the global challenges and the resulting social responsibility, RWTH Aachen University, one of the leading technical universities in Germany, has established the bridging professorship “Gender and Diversity in Engineering” (GDI) which educates engineers with an interdisciplinary approach to expand engineering limits. The interdisciplinary teaching concept of the research group pursues an approach which imparts an application oriented Gender and Diversity expertise to future engineers. In the frame of an established teaching concept, which is a result of experiences and expertise of the research group, students gain theoretical knowledge about Gender and Diversity and learn how to transfer their knowledge into their later field of action.
In the frame of the conference the institutional approach will be presented as well as the teaching concept which will be introduced by concrete course examples.
Future engineers are increasingly confronted with the so-called Megatrends which are the big social challenges society has to cope with. These Megatrends, such as “Silver Society”, “Globalization”, “Mobility” and “Female Shift” require an application-oriented perspective on Diversity especially in the engineering field. Therefore, it is necessary to enable future engineers not only to look at the technical perspectives of a problem, but also to be able to see the related questions within societies they are developing their artefacts for. The aim of teaching engineering should be to prepare engineers for these requirements and to draw attention to the diverse needs in a globalized world.
Bringing together technical knowledge and social competences which go beyond a mere training of the so-called “soft skills”, is a new approach followed at RWTH Aachen University, one of the leading technical universities in Germany. RWTH Aachen University has established the bridging professorship “Gender and Diversity in Engineering” (GDI) which educates engineers with an interdisciplinary approach to expand engineering limits. In the frame of a sustainable teaching concept the research group under the leadership of Prof. Carmen Leicht-Scholten has developed an approach which imparts a supplication-specific Gender and Diversity expertise to engineers. In workshops students gain theoretical knowledge about Gender and Diversity and learn how to transfer their knowledge in their special field of study and later work. To substantiate this, the course participants have to solve case studies from real life. The cases which are developed in collaboration with non-profit organizations and enterprises from economy rise the students to challenges which are inspired by professional life. Evaluation shows the success of this approach as well as an increasing demand for such teaching formats.
Within the framework of the project a genderand diversity-oriented teaching evaluation and modern, media-supported blended learning approaches were used in order to achieve the intended goals. First research results of the literature and status quo analysis were already implemented and tested in newly designed teaching approaches, for example in a multidisciplinary introductory lecture of civil engineering at RWTH Aachen University.
Ausblick: Der individualitätsbezogene Diversity Management-Ansatz als Antwort auf Individualisierung
(2015)
Der Megatrend Individualisierung fordert von Unternehmen, ihre Strategien und Prozessabläufe bei zunehmender Globalisierung grundlegend zu überdenken. Während Strategien und Prozessabläufe im Unternehmen Standards unterliegen, entwickelt sich unsere Gesellschaft immer stärker zu einem individuumszentrierten System, in dem es gilt, Werte und Lebensstile der Individuen zu berücksichtigen und derart wertzuschätzen, dass Mitarbeitende motiviert und mit hoher Bindung an das Unternehmen die anstehenden Leistungen für das Unternehmen erbringen. Im Konzept DiM sind Standardisierung und Individualisierung keine gegensätzlichen Aspekte, da bei DiM neben der Betrachtung des betriebswirtschaftlichen Nutzens dieses Konzepts für Unternehmen die Wertschätzung des Individuums als genuines Merkmal betont wird.
Laut Zukunftsinstitut (2010) stellt die Individualisierung eine langfristige und nachhaltige Veränderung dar, die die gesamte Gesellschaft (den einzelnen Menschen, Unternehmen, den Staat) betrifft und Auswirkungen auf nahezu alle Lebensbereiche (z. B. Arbeit, Wohnen, Partnerschaft) hat. Die Individualisierung beschreibt dabei die Entwicklung hin zur Fokussierung persönlicher Interessen und Lebensentscheidungen der einzelnen Person (Kunze, Individualisierung, 2011). Der Grund für diese Entwicklung sind laut Kunze (Individualisierung, 2011) Treiber wie steigendes Vermögen, Bildung und Mobilität, was die einzelne Person unabhängiger von größeren Gemeinschaften macht und mehr Freiheit zur Selbstverwirklichung bietet. Als eine Konsequenz daraus werden Wertevorstellungen nicht mehr einfach hingenommen, sondern für die eigene Person überprüft und individualisiert (Kunze, Individualisierung, 2011). So wies Beck bereits 1996 darauf hin, dass Individualisierung meint „erstens die Auflösung und zweitens die Ablösung industriegesellschaftlicher Lebensformen durch andere, in denen die Einzelnen ihre Biographie selbst herstellen, inszenieren, zusammenflickschustern müssen“ (Beck, Die Erfindung des Politischen, 1996, S. 150).
Unsere unternehmerische Umwelt befindet sich in einem zunehmend dynamischen Wandel. Dies führt dazu, dass Herausforderungen, denen sich Unternehmen stellen müssen, immer komplexer werden. Hier gilt es zunehmend, eine Balance zwischen verschiedenen Spannungsfeldern zu erreichen. Sogenannte Megatrends stellen die Treiber dieses Wandels dar. Als Megatrend werden nach dem Zukunftsinstitut (2010a) richtungsweisende Veränderungstendenzen aufgefasst, die alle Bereiche des Lebens sowohl individuell als auch gesellschaftlich beeinflussen und langfristige Auswirkungen haben.
This study investigated the anaerobic digestion of an algal–bacterial biofilm grown in artificial wastewater in an Algal Turf Scrubber (ATS). The ATS system was located in a greenhouse (50°54′19ʺN, 6°24′55ʺE, Germany) and was exposed to seasonal conditions during the experiment period. The methane (CH4) potential of untreated algal–bacterial biofilm (UAB) and thermally pretreated biofilm (PAB) using different microbial inocula was determined by anaerobic batch fermentation. Methane productivity of UAB differed significantly between microbial inocula of digested wastepaper, a mixture of manure and maize silage, anaerobic sewage sludge, and percolated green waste. UAB using sewage sludge as inoculum showed the highest methane productivity. The share of methane in biogas was dependent on inoculum. Using PAB, a strong positive impact on methane productivity was identified for the digested wastepaper (116.4%) and a mixture of manure and maize silage (107.4%) inocula. By contrast, the methane yield was significantly reduced for the digested anaerobic sewage sludge (50.6%) and percolated green waste (43.5%) inocula. To further evaluate the potential of algal–bacterial biofilm for biogas production in wastewater treatment and biogas plants in a circular bioeconomy, scale-up calculations were conducted. It was found that a 0.116 km2 ATS would be required in an average municipal wastewater treatment plant which can be viewed as problematic in terms of space consumption. However, a substantial amount of energy surplus (4.7–12.5 MWh a−1) can be gained through the addition of algal–bacterial biomass to the anaerobic digester of a municipal wastewater treatment plant. Wastewater treatment and subsequent energy production through algae show dominancy over conventional technologies.
The planned coal phase-out in Germany by 2038 will lead to the dismantling of power plants with a total capacity of approx. 30 GW. A possible further use of these assets is the conversion of the power plants to thermal storage power plants; the use of these power plants on the day-ahead market is considerably limited by their technical parameters. In this paper, the influence of the technical boundary conditions on the operating times of these storage facilities is presented. For this purpose, the storage power plants were described as an MILP problem and two price curves, one from 2015 with a relatively low renewable penetration (33 %) and one from 2020 with a high renewable energy penetration (51 %) are compared. The operating times were examined as a function of the technical parameters and the critical influencing factors were investigated. The thermal storage power plant operation duration and the energy shifted with the price curve of 2020
increases by more than 25 % compared to 2015.
Solar thermal concentrated power is an emerging technology that provides clean electricity for the growing energy market. To the solar thermal concentrated power plant systems belong the parabolic trough, the Fresnel collector, the solar dish, and the central receiver system.
For high-concentration solar collector systems, optical and thermal analysis is essential. There exist a number of measurement techniques and systems for the optical and thermal characterization of the efficiency of solar thermal concentrated systems.
For each system, structure, components, and specific characteristics types are described. The chapter presents additionally an outline for the calculation of system performance and operation and maintenance topics. One main focus is set to the models of components and their construction details as well as different types on the market. In the later part of this article, different criteria for the choice of technology are analyzed in detail.