Floris Zaaijer
The Netherlands

"The course gives a broad view of the range in which FRP can be applied and clearly describes the pros and cons of the various production methods."

While working at FiberCore Europe as a Project coordinator, Floris Zaaijer participated in the online course Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composites in Structural Engineering. Read about his experience.

What was your motivation for enrolling in the course?
The course gives a broad view of the range in which FRP can be applied and clearly describes the pros and cons of the various production methods. From our point of view, I’ve always considered our production method (vacuum infusion) as the most preferred, however, after taking the course I would say that it really depends on the situation. Therefore, for detailed engineering I would keep in mind using a hybrid construction considering for instance pultrusion. Next to that it gives some introduction to structural engineering with composites, which I personally found very interesting.

How did/will this course impact your career or life?
The course rekindled my ambition to become a composite engineer. Therefore, half a year after taking the course I signed up for the aerospace master program at the TU Delft. Currently I am working on my thesis on void formation in liquid composite processing as part of the Aerospace Structures and Materials track. All things considered, I think this course offers a good introduction into manufacturing of composite structures. It motivated me at least to further develop myself in the field, which I would say is one of the better decisions in my life.

How was your experience learning online?
In enjoyed it very much, it was a very accessible platform. The videos in combination with the multiple-choice questions were very helpful. Group assignments combined with skype worked perfect as well. In particular I enjoyed the second chapter with the rule of mixtures and the structural engineering assessment. The report provided by the course instructors gave a perfect clear example on how to do the structural engineering of an object right down from the start.

What is your advice to someone who would like to take a similar online course?
My advice would be to have frequent meetings with fellow students to discuss to assignments in depth as they will likely have a different background than you, resulting in unique engineering solutions that you might not have been able to come up with yourself and therefore expanding your own design capabilities.