9310000 Haque Materials courses introduced into curricula such as Mechanical Engineering necessarily constitute a small fraction of the total number of topics covered and face the danger of being considered fringe courses that have to be tolerated but not necessarily mastered by students. It is therefore necessary to provide tools for students learning that make the contents interesting but also involve the students in their own learning. Experiments in materials and manufacturing are a very necessary part of this attempt but by their very nature excludes manipulation and redesign by students. They are typically set up by faculty and students whose understanding of the material far exceeds the maturity and knowledge of the undergraduate student. They require significant lead time to set up and are costly to implement. The advent of high powered computer technologies and the development of computer simulation methods of manufacturing processes offer great potential as tools for teaching of undergraduates. The objective is to incorporate a finite element based simulation package for forming processes into a senior level undergraduate materials laboratory for enhancing undergraduate student learning of materials and manufacturing processes. This necessitates the development of course materials and careful design of numerical experiments that will encourage student exploration and enhance understanding of material behavior during forming.
