How can complex antenna systems be developed and analysed more efficiently? Students from the faculties of Engineering and Computer Science at The Hochschule Niederrhein have been working on this question. As part of so-called IWA projects, students work on specific questions from industry and develop their own technical solutions. They have now presented the results of their work during a visit to the company CPI Vertex Antennentechnik from Duisburg-Homberg.
"Our aim is to closely interlink teaching education, research and practical applications," says Karl Steeger, Professor of Technical Mechanics and Design Engineering at The Hochschule Niederrhein. Before his appointment at the university, he was Technical Director at CPI Vertex Antennentechnik.
His work focused on the optimisation and automation of post-processing in the Ansys simulation software. When developing high-precision antenna systems, large amounts of data are generated using numerical simulations. This data must be analysed in order to determine the key performance parameters of an antenna and compare different variants with each other. However, analysing this data by hand is costly and time-consuming.
The students therefore developed concepts and tools with which important performance parameters can be systematically extracted from extensive simulation results and processed in a structured manner. The aim is to evaluate relevant parameters more quickly, reproducibly and automatically, thus creating a reliable foundation course for technical optimisation processes. This allows complex antenna systems to be analysed more efficiently and variants to be evaluated in a more targeted manner.
The students were welcomed on site by Managing Director Peter Fasel and Technical Manager Christian Bram. In addition to the company management, experts from the fields of design and numerical calculation and simulation also took part in the presentations. "We see great potential for innovation in the field of high-precision antenna systems," says Professor Karl Steeger. The plan is to continue the approaches developed in follow-up projects and gradually integrate them into industrial development and optimisation processes.
