Calvin Rans is an associate professor within the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. In 2019, he was elected Docent van het Jaar (Teacher of the Year) for the Netherlands.
Rans’ research interests lay in developing a mechanistic understanding of the failure and degradation of lightweight aircraft materials and structures. True structural optimization that aims at minimizing weight without sacrificing safety can only be achieved by a thorough understanding of failure and failure progression. With such knowledge, structures can be designed to fail in a slow, progressive, and obvious manner, enabling failures to be detected and repaired long before they become critical to the safety of the aircraft. This design philosophy is known as Damage Tolerant Design and is the motivating driver for Rans’ work.
Recently, Rans’ work in fatigue and damage tolerance has branched out into the emerging field of Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM), also commonly known as 3D-printing. The design freedom allowed by this manufacturing technique enables structural designs with complexities and topologies that were previously the realm of science fiction. The technology enables new novel weight-optimized structures, but the question remains how do we certify them? In order to answer this, we need to determine the impact of the new manufacturing method on fatigue, degradation, and durability, and link this to the design and optimization procedure.
He has taught Bachelor and Master level course in the field of Statics, Solid Mechanics, and Aircraft Structural Design and Graduate level courses in Fatigue and Damage Tolerance, Lightweight Structures, Joining Methods, and Air Safety Investigation.