My Teaching

An important part of working at a university is the contact to the undergraduate and graduate students. I started as a Teaching Assistant for "Engineering Mechanics" during my undergrad studies. During my PhD studies, I supported lectures in "Mechanics of Beams and Shells" and "Elasticity Theory". I hold the Saxon Certificate for Higher Education Didactics and strive to apply the methods I learned in various courses to further develop my teaching.
Since 2018, I am responsible for the two lectures "Stab- und Flächentragwerke (Mechanics of Beams and Shells)" and "Struktur, Strömung und Kopplung" (Continuum Mechanics and Fluid-Structure-Interaction). In 2024 I also started the course "Einsatz von Sprachmodellen für das Studium der Festkörpermechanik (Application of Language Models for the study of solid mechanics)" to discover, together with the students, the role that Large Language Models can play in study and research.

Mechanics of Beams and Shells

MW-MB-SIM-08/LB-12, 6th/8th semester, "Stab- und Flächentragwerke"

© 2021 Adrian Ehrenhofer
In summer semester, the lecture in Mechanics of Beams and Shells ("Stab- und Flächentragwerke") starts. The main contents of this lecture are:
  • Basics of continuum mechanics for 3D bodies.
  • 1D structural mechanics theories for rods and beams (Bernoulli & Timoshenko theory, warping torsion)
  • 2D structural mechanics theories for disks (Airy theory) and plates (Kirchhoff & Reissner-Mindlin theory)
  • Introduction to Classical Laminate Theory
  • Introduction to shell theories

The lecture is aimed at 6th semester students in "Simulation Methods" and 8th semester students in "Lightweight Construction" (both specializations in Mechanical Engineering).

Continuum Mechanics and Fluid-Structure-Interaction

MW-MB-LRT-24/SIM-22, 9th semester, "Struktur, Strömung und Kopplung"

© 2021 Adrian Ehrenhofer
In winter semester, I teach the first part (Structural Mechanics) of the lecture "Continuum Mechanics and Fluid-Structure-Interaction", which is a joint lecture between our Institute for Solid Mechanics and the Institute for Fluid Mechanics. The main contents of the Structural Mechanics part of the lecture are:
  • Introduction to tensor notation
  • Kinematics of large deformations and deformation speed
  • Balance laws in multi-field problems
  • Principles of constitutive models (assumptions and classification by Haupt)
  • Application of the Finite Element Method for multi-field problems (thermo-mechanics, electro-mechanics, chemo-electrics)

The lecture is aimed at 9th semester students in "Aerospace Engineering" (specialization in Mechanical Engineering).

Demonstration model for beam bending

Haptical experience with skew bending

© 2021 Adrian Ehrenhofer
In course of the QUIX project by the Student's Council of the TU Dresden (StuRa), we designed and fabricated 5 models for basic Engineering Mechanics. The construction is a demonstration model for skew beam bending. The beam is clamped on one side and designed such that a visible bending can be easily caused by hand. In the case of non-symmetrical profiles (e.g. L-profile), the skew bending because of the deviatory moment of inertia is also recognizable. At the same time, the support of the beam allows the profile to be freely rotated. When the students calculate the respective principle coordinate system, they can rotate the beam to the correct angle and obtain straight bending.

The system is now used in the basic course Engineering Mechanics to demonstrate this effect.