The department

With the appointment of Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. B. Künne on October 1, 1993, the Department of Machine Elements of Transport Technology (MTT) was founded at the University of Dortmund. Initially, the department was established with one research assistant and two student assistants in the premises of GB IV, Campus South. After completion of the new mechanical engineering building, the department moved to Campus North. Due to the decrease in student numbers in 1996 and 1997, no successor was appointed for Prof. Dr.-Ing. R. Röper, who had left the Chair of Machine Elements in the meantime. The former tasks of this chair and the remaining employees were assigned to the department MTT in 1999. At the same time, the department was renamed "Machine Elements", abbreviated ME. Today, the Department of Machine Elements employs scientific and technical staff.

The field of machine elements is primarily concerned with the classic engineering activity of developing high-performance products, machines and systems that meet requirements and fulfill the product properties desired by the customer in the best possible way, thus also decisively ensuring the international competitiveness of German products and companies. In this context, product development is understood as the combination of all activities required in design, testing, laboratory development, calculation, design, simulation and prototyping.

The teaching and research field includes the design and calculation of "classical" design elements, the development of methodological and technical aids (e.g. design guidelines, simulations, etc.) for the designer as well as the organizational aspects of the development process. In this context, teaching tasks consist of imparting basic and advanced knowledge of product development to students of the diploma programs in mechanical engineering, logistics and industrial engineering as well as to students of the teacher training programs sec. II. vocational subjects mechanical engineering and production engineering. This includes the basics of technical drawing and the "classical" machine elements on the one hand, and on the other hand the topics of design systematics, CAD use in design and, as a further focus, drive technology in the main course of study.

Training measures both in institutes for further education (e.g. Haus der Technik, Essen) and in-house seminars in the subject areas of cost-conscious design, design for welding, design with plastics and design basics for non-technicians round off the range of activities.

The machine elements department has the following equipment

• approx. 62 CAD workstations, networked via server and equipped with several DIN A0 plotters
• other high-quality computer equipment
• Test laboratory with flexible systems for the fast and economic set-up of test rigs
• Computer-aided data acquisition and evaluation technology
• Drive technology devices and components
• Own production facilities for experimental applications and prototype construction
• Seminar and training room with audio-visual presentation technology
• 3-D scanner with reverse engineering software: area-based acquisition of geometric data from prototypes and existing products, transfer to CAD data