3D Printing of Tectonic Educational Models Designed by Students
Julien Duquennoy, UniLaSalle
Lise Gransac, UniLaSalle
UniLaSalle is an engineering school that specialty is Earth Sciences. During their training, students learn tectonics such as faults and associated phenomena and it is sometimes difficult to visualize the formation of tectoglyphs and deformations linked to fractures.
The objective of this work is to design and realize experimental models that will be used during practical work in order to facilitate the learning of tectonics.
Third year students are in charge of this work as part of a Research Initiation Memory. Two pairs of students work on a bibliographic study on which they rely to create 3D models on the 3DEXPERIENCE© platform (Dassault Systèmes). The 3D models are then 3D printed in order to be used during class sessions.
The first group is constituted by students in technician training. In this field, the pedagogy used is mainly inductive: the students start from the practical case to reach the theory. For this project their aim is to build analogical models of classical tectonic structures like faults and grabens. These experiments intend to identify viewable phenomena in context of practical work sessions, and to determine which materials are the most suitable to use.
Meanwhile, the second group of students comes from the engineering training and receive a rather deductive pedagogy: the theory is learned in class and applied during projects, internships or field trips. The work here is focused on a bibliographic study concerning scale factors: how can we represent natural phenomena with a different time scale, stress and resistance of materials? The main objective of this study is to identify the ideal materials to represent small-scale tectonic phenomena.
Their main common goal is the realization of 3D models and the supervision of the printing of these on the Ultimaker3 printer. The work is still in progress but the first prototypes have been printed. The models consist in boxes that can slide on rails and which are designed to receive the materials to be deformed. Among the identified materials, kinetic sand seems particularly interesting thanks to its physical properties and its ease of use during practical work.
Students are very enthusiastic about developing the educational tools they would have liked to benefit from. To carry out their work, the students are also very motivated by the use of advanced technologies such as the 3DEXPERIENCE© Platform and the 3D printer. These experimental models will be used in training courses during 2018-2019 scholar year.