PhD Research Position on Product Design for Robotic Demanufacturing

(ref. BAP-2022-776)

Laatst aangepast :

28/10/2022

The KU Leuven research group on Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) of the Department of Mechanical Engineering has, in close cooperation with their industrial partners, acquired significant experience in re- and demanufacturing, or in other words the dismantling of products into their components or composing materials for the purpose of rework, reuse, repair, repurposing, remanufacturing and recycling. The KU Leuven has recently established the Re- and Demanufacturing Lab in Heverlee to support these research activities. The ten-headed team working in this lab has in the framework of various national and international projects developed and installed various setups in this lab with state-of-the-art automation, spectroscopic and computer vision equipment for material characterization, robotic sorting and robotic disassembly or dismantling. The group’s ambition is to further develop its lab and infrastructure, together with the related software and expertise in this field. This to support system integrators, original equipment manufacturers and reuse, repair, remanufacturing and recycling companies in the development of the next generation of products and processes for a circular economy.

Project

The envisaged research will be part of the European ERA-MIN Scandere project: Scaling up a circular economy business model by new design, leaner remanufacturing, and automated material recycling technologies. In this project KU Leuven collaborates with 6 other European partners: Linkopin Univeristy Sweden, Elektrorecycling Poland, Compliance and Risks Executive Management Ireland, Pozan University of Technology Poland, Institute Polytechnique de Grenoble France and BSH (Bosh Siemens) Germany. In this project, KU Leuven leads the activities on Product as a Service business models and offerings and design for robotic demanufacturing. These activities will be carried out within a multidisciplinary and multinational/multicultural team of researchers at KU Leuven, in which competences are already available for, amongst others Product as a Service business models and offerings. Therefore, we are looking for a new colleague to complement this team with the objective to investigate product and process designs to facilitate robotic demanufacturing, including the identification, disassembly and components sorting and testing. For this both the development of novel methods to assess the ease of robotic demanufacturing (in analogy with the eDIM method developed by KUL in prior research), as well as novel product and process designs is envisaged. The ultimate goal is to demonstrate how novel product designs can increase the robustness and efficiency of robotic demanufacturing processes with the robotic setups available in the re- and demanufacturing lab.

Therefore, in the context of the Scandere project:

• You will investigate state-of-the-art technologies adopted in demanufacturing and today’s challenges and requirements for robotic demanufacturing
• You will investigate methods for the evaluation of the ease of robotic demanufacturing
• You will investigate how the product architecture and fasteners should be adapted to facilitate robotic demanufacturing
• You will support the mechanical designs and programming to update the available lab setups and related software, for robotic demanufacturing tests.
• You will setup and perform tests with case study products of the project partners e.g., the Bosh robot vacuum cleaner, to evaluate the impact of the proposed innovations on the efficiency and robustness of robotic demanufacturing processes.

Profiel

• You are part of a multi-disciplinary research group, working on the topic of Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. MSc. Ing. Jef Peeters.
• You follow-up literature, patents, company releases, conferences, etc., and use the obtained information to determine the state-of-the-art and identify opportunities for novel contributions to the field.
• You are responsible for developing, implementing, prototyping and evaluating novel design approaches for design for robotic demanufacturing.
• You help to define Master thesis topics related to your research and guide Master students with their thesis work.
• You support in teaching activities for bachelor or master students at the faculty of engineering technology, campus Groep T (max 10% of the working time)
• You report to your senior colleagues, supervisors, and the different project partners during the bi-annual project meetings organized at the premises of the different project partners
• You present your research results at international conferences.

• You hold a Master’s in Engineering for which you obtained a high GPA (in Belgium a cumlaude level is a prerequisite).
• You have good mechanical design skills to generate and evaluate different concepts, to produce a detailed design, to follow-up the production, to support the assembly and to evaluate the final products and systems, programming skills and experience with Python programming and/or communication with robots is a plus..
• You like to bring theory to practice by hands-on experiments.
• You like to work in a multi-disciplinary team of international researchers and show willingness to learn/explore innovative technologies and techniques.
• You have a creative mindset, like to take initiative, and are not afraid to address innovative ideas and new opportunities.
• You have good communication skills (oral and written) in English.

Aanbod

• We offer a varied and challenging job with an attractive salary package.
• We offer a research position in a stimulating and multi-disciplinary environment and a solid industrial network.
• We will support you in publishing in high-ranked international scientific journals.
• We provide the opportunity to work towards obtaining a PhD degree within an international network.

Interesse?

For more information contact Prof. Dr. Jef Peeters, tel.: +32 16 32 25 69, mail: jef.peeters@kuleuven.be.

KU Leuven wil een omgeving creëren waarin alle talenten maximaal tot ontplooiing kunnen komen, ongeacht gender, leeftijd, culturele herkomst, nationaliteit of functiebeperking. Hebt u vragen in verband met toegankelijkheid of ondersteuningsmogelijkheden, dan kan u ons contacteren via diversiteit.HR@kuleuven.be.