Students from the Université d’Artois visit Leipzig

Author: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Anke Bucher

From 27 January to 1 February 2019, our faculty once again welcomed students from our partner university, the Université d’Artois in France. As part of a partnership that has now been in place for over twenty years, a thematic seminar is held for one week each year. As in the previous year, this year’s seminar was entitled ‘Process chains for quality assurance using the example of a reverse engineering process’. The seminar is largely funded by the Franco-German Youth Office, with additional grants provided by both universities.

The seminar participants were mechanical engineering students from Béthune, accompanied by their lecturers Martin Geiß and Arnaud Berlemont. As the students from France were here during the final week of lectures in January, there were plenty of opportunities for them to meet and exchange ideas with students from the HTWK.

The seminar centred on various courses and practical sessions focusing on the process of reverse engineering. These courses were led by Prof. Schulze (Gießen), Prof. Schönfelder (FEM simulation),  Professor Rudolph (vibration parameter monitoring) and the staff members Mr Dörfler (scanning), Mr Wallburg (finite element simulation), Mr Hofbauer (measurement of solar cells) and Mr Wolf (vibration parameter monitoring) in English. The thematic seminar took place in the Nieper-Bau faculty building in the Connewitz district. During a tour of the faculty, the guests were able to gain a comprehensive insight, in particular, into the well-equipped laboratories and the technical capabilities of the lecture theatre.

Over the course of the week, the seminar participants took part in various excursions and factory tours.  One particularly interesting highlight this year, for example, was the tour of the Mikrosa factory, a manufacturer of premium-class centreless external cylindrical grinding machines. The factory’s managing director gave the students an overview of the company’s history and product range. They then went into the production halls, where they were able to observe the manufacturing of the grinding machines first-hand.

Another highlight of the visit was the tour of the Mining Technology Park in the south of Leipzig, in the so-called Leipziger Neuseenland.

This recreational area owes its existence to decades of extraction, processing and utilisation of the natural resource lignite. The park showcases the entire extraction cycle of an opencast mining operation on its grounds.

This provides an insight into all the related areas of work, ranging from the dismantling of the cultivated landscape, through to the preparation of the site and groundwater lowering, overburden removal and coal extraction, right through to the reconstruction of the site and the rehabilitation and recultivation of the landscape.

In addition to the activities at the university, the French students also had plenty of opportunities to experience the local culture through encounters with local people. Right at the start of their stay, the student council of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Energy Technology organised a joint dinner with the French and German students at the ‘Hans im Glück’ restaurant in Leipzig city centre. This quickly broke the ice between the students, and further get-togethers followed over the course of the week.

The students from France also met with pupils from the bilingual Anton-Philipp-Reclam Grammar School. Mr Forschle, a very dedicated French teacher at the school, had organised this meeting. The Reclam pupils, all of whom have a very good command of French, took the guests on a tour to introduce them to their home city of Leipzig. On another afternoon, the French guests, accompanied by Mr Forschle, set out on a journey through history and visited the Monument to the Battle of the Nations and its associated museum.

These encounters were once again a great pleasure for everyone involved. For the French guests, the eventful week passed far too quickly and many would have liked to have stayed in Leipzig for longer.

In September this year, members of our faculty will make the scheduled return visit to Béthune. There, eighteen students will be able to tackle specific challenges in using the CATIA CAD programme as part of an English-language seminar.