Dream job of being a car mechanic? That was once. The range of apprenticeships and study programs in the automotive industry has now grown significantly. UNIGLOBALE has taken a closer look at some of them: sound designers, tire engineers, innovations such as Industry 4.0 and also the space industry.
80 kilometers per hour, wet road, full steering lock - now it becomes clear whether the previous tests were worth it. “Because a car is only as good as the tires that can transmit the power. Handling in wet conditions at the limit is one of the trickiest situations I can get into as a driver,” says Philipp Must.
With a thirst for knowledge, creativity, a spirit of research and practical experience, Must takes on tire development as a tire engineer at Continental in Hanover.
Reducing rolling resistance isn't everything when it comes to tire development. It depends on the balance of many criteria in the target spider of the tire: “Like a spider's web, there are individual key points such as tire performance, dry handling and durability. It’s about how to expand the network,” says Must.
How can you extend a tire's life in the long term, what effect does it have on the tire if I drive in circles five times to the left or five times to the right, and how can I continue to use this test track? These are questions that Philipp Must is concerned with. “The topic is highly complex: if I want to improve tire wear, for example, I have to take into account that other properties always change as well.” The industry itself trains leading specialists. Chemists, physicists, technicians, mechanical engineers, process engineers, business people – they are all at the table when it comes to developing a tire. This requires good teamwork skills, as you often work together in interdisciplinary and international project teams.
Philipp Must is the so-called Section Manager of Continental's fully automatic tire testing system AIBA. The facility in which the test car is accelerated to 120 kilometers per hour is up to 300 meters long and 30 meters wide. The car is braked on different road surfaces. Must, who has been looking after and optimizing the system since November last year, came to Continental via a detour: After studying hearing technology and audiology, which he completed in Oldenburg, the now 34-year-old worked as a freelancer in technical marketing for two years: “I come from loudspeaker technology. I've done everything that cares about good sound. Thanks to an unsolicited application, I came to Conti.”
Research, development, investments
Today Continental is a broad-based international group. That was also a reason for Philipp Must to change his career path at the time: “They work together scientifically and technically in large teams and I no longer wanted to just worry about tire noise, but also wanted to take other paths within this tire biotope.”
The ideal sound
However, Dr. enjoys working with sounds. Alexander Driver. He is responsible for noise quality and sound design in the Research & Development department at Daimler. Since 2012 he has been working in Sindelfingen on the correct sound of switches, central locking, sunroof and air conditioning, for example. Every clap, click or roar is not random. A warning signal must be clearly perceived as such and must not annoy the driver: “The information nature and urgency must come across clearly so that the warning signal actually works in a warning situation.” Driver, who ensures good acoustics at Daimler, also became involved in sound engineering privately at a very early age. While colleagues trained their good ears by playing instruments, he also tinkered with synthesizers and experimented with the settings.
The search for the ideal sound often involves a lot of detailed work. Sometimes sounds are played on the keyboard, sometimes sounds are sketched on a piece of paper: “As a team, we think together how the sound should change, whether it should be quieter or louder,” says fahrer.
The clay tinkerers also come from various professional fields such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science. “Basically, in my opinion, it is important not to specialize too early, but to study something broad,” says fahrer. Something with technology – mechatronics, for example. With a degree in mechatronics, fahrer also entered the professional field of NVH engineering, noise vibration harshness. NVH engineering is about ensuring acoustic quality and quiet. “For example, when the car switches off at a red light using the automatic start-stop system, I suddenly become more aware of the background noises in the car.” “In the end, it’s not just about defining why something sounds good and why not, but rather about being able to understand how electronic circuits work, for example, or being able to understand the technical language used by colleagues in technical departments.”
Instead of working on a car, it would be better to work on a satellite
When developing innovative projects and products, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the problems of neighboring disciplines. This is the only way to achieve an optimal result. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Herpel, who works as an expert for Advanced On-Board Avionics Software at Airbus Defense and Space in Friedrichshafen, knows from many years of experience that “research and development” is an area that gives students and young professionals the time to explore new ideas and try it out. Airbus Defense and Space is the only company in the world to cover the range of civil and military space systems. Herpel, who also works as a project manager on software for autonomous space systems, is currently supervising five students at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University. Developing switching systems, writing software, working on a project continuously for six months - that's what his students deal with in the first two semesters.
Initially, not many specialists are needed: “It’s important that you do what you’re really interested in and not, for example, go into the games industry because game design is in fashion,” says Herpel. Niklas Hehenkamp, one of his students who is about to complete his bachelor's degree, describes it like this: "When do you ever have the chance to have something under your soldering iron that cruises around the earth and sends pictures?"
Technical, methodological and social skills as well as soft skills and the ability to work in a team are also crucial factors for future collaboration for Herpel. In any case, specialization only occurs in project work. For example, the thermal engineer has the challenging task of taking care of the “internal climate” of the satellite. “Another problem in space travel is the high level of radiation, to which normal electronics are sensitive. These are not processors like in laptops, but very special processors.” A main task is to test, test and test again. Because only what really works goes into space. “Ariane 5 has successfully launched for the 64th time and all the satellites we have sent up in recent years are working. And they have to,” says Herpel. The development processes must be designed in such a way that errors are discovered and corrected at an early stage. The concept is right-first-time and means: All parts of a satellite or rocket must function error-free upon delivery. “We don’t have the opportunity to launch a recall campaign like the automotive industry does.”
Industry 4.0 – the “Internet of Things”
Katharina Kunz, engineer for virtual process processing at AUDI AG, came to the automotive industry through an internship abroad and her master's thesis. At the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg she was able to gain her first experience at Siemens as an industrial engineering student. Today she and her team at Audi are working on a virtual reality system in the pre-production center: “Using the design data, we can display the individual components of a car graphically and three-dimensionally. We then simulate the assembly and check how the components fit and the assembly process should run in the best possible way.” Using 3D glasses and gesture control, she tests assembly steps of new models before production starts. Thanks to simulation, not only can production costs be saved, but the quality of the car development process can also be increased. “We are more likely to reach series maturity,” says Kunz. This is a fusion of the real and virtual world, networking of things, cars and industrial plants. Or Industry 4.0. Kunz also specialized in her project and is now an expert in virtual process assurance.
Dream job of being a car mechanic? That was once. The range of apprenticeships and study programs in the automotive industry has now grown significantly. UNIGLOBALE has taken a closer look at some of them: sound designers, tire engineers, innovations such as Industry 4.0 and also the space industry.
