The Synchrotron Radiation beamline as a pedagogicaltool in engineering schools and universities
Pascal Bernaud1, Antonia Ceppi1, Benjamin Fournier2,
Pascal Morenton1 and Jean­Michel Gillet1
1Ecole Centrale Paris, Grande Voie des Vignes, 92295 Chatenay­Malabry, 92295 Chatenay­Malabry cedex, France
2CEA Saclay, DEN/DANS/DMN/SRMA Bat 453, 91191 Gif­sur­Yvette cedex, France

jean­michel.gilletecp.fr

Abstract

Abstract: As many superior education systems, French Grandes Ecoles have a need for a renewal of theirpedagogy when teaching technical and scientic disciplines. The necessity of a multidisciplinary approach and a moreecient presentation of new collaborative tools (based on NICT) are among new key issues teachers are facing. We
report an original pedagogical activity at Ecole Centrale Paris based on the multiple scientic aspects provided by thedesign of storage ring based synchrotron radiation beamlines. We intend to explain why this course has become a u­nique occasion for the student to discover how their basic knowledge in physics, heat transfer, mechanics, choice ofmaterials and even social sciences can be put into practice. After ve years, this course named ``integrated design of asynchrotron beamline'' has signicantly increased the students' interest for basic and applied sciences. Results from asurvey taken over the last four years are given.

1. INTRODUCTION: A Need for a Renewalof the Training of French Engineers
Traditionally, engineers educated in the French sys­
tem are considered as talented persons, stemmed froma drastically selective system. Before they entered their
specialization school (see table 1 and legend), they
have systematically devoted two to three years to be
trained in a ``preparation school'' to run competitive
entrance exams so that they could be recruited by en­
gineering schools on the basis of their skills in basic
sciences (mostly mathematics and physics). Once they
enter these engineering schools, they expect to betaught in a rather dierent way, so that they rapidly
become ecient experts in their eld (chemistry, elec­
tronics, aeronautics . . .).
A few schools, among which the Ecole Centrale
Paris (ECP), have the ambition to give a wider spec­
trum to their teaching for a limited number of students
selected among the best half thousand, each year. ECP
strives towards training the future project managers,
or engineers, who will be participating to the design or
optimisation of a multiphysics system1). The students
graduating from ECP are hence expected to be awareof and understand the basics of each disciplines(mathematics, physics, thermal transfer, mechanics,
materials, computer sciences, electronics, . . .), theirconcepts, standard approximations and solving strate­

gies. They should be knowledgeable enough to argue
with experts in each eld and, in that respect, rely on arm scientic and technical sole. This requirement fora large span of expertise involves a drastic change inthe mentalities. Basic sciences, which were primarily
considered for selection purposes, change their status.
They ought to become the solid kernel from which
other disciplines (such as thermal transfer, combus­

Table 1

Schematic French higher education system. The university
path is widely open while the ``Grandes Ecole'' can only beaccessed through a highly selective national entrance exam.
These ``Grandes Ecoles'' provide France with most of thehigh level engineers, managers and entrepreneurs. They
usually oer a general (common core) technical and scien­tic background and a strong specialization among dier­
ent disciplines such as electricity, electronics, chemistry,civilengineering, aerospace,computersciences,nance, . . .

142  úËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3
(C) 2009 The Japanese Society for Synchrotron Radiation ResearchgsbNX ¡ The Synchrotron Radiation beamline as a pedagogical tool in engineering schools and universities

tion, uid mechanics, nano and life sciences, and otherapplied sciences) will develop. Such a transition inmentalities is often hard to carry out. In that respect,
we believe that a multidisciplinary project based learn­ing oers a greater opportunity of success.

2. Framework and pedagogical goals
As a recurrent request from potential employers, fu­
ture engineers should be able to tackle a technicallycomplex problem from a wide scientic perspective,
fore backing on a condent knowledge of orders ofmagnitude. They are expected to have the ability to br­
ing prospective from simple ``back of the envelop''calculations. On the other hand, it would be inconceiv­
able that they would not be familiar with today's ap­
propriate information and communication techniques(ICT). They should master some standard numerical
tools such as, of course a spreadsheet software (such as
Excel), but also symbolic and numerical calculations
codes (Mathematica, Mapple/ SciLab, Comsol, Py­thon or equivalent) and Computer Aided Design pro­grams (Catia, SolidWorks or AutoCad). Finally, thefuture engineer should feel at ease in a group, aware of
the ecient behaviour conditions to carry out a suc­cessful team work. Today such a collaborative work
must include the use of virtual environment and col­laborative platforms using the internet technologies.
All these aspects are dicult to gather in a single ac­tivity and are frequently encountered separately in astandard engineer's curriculum. Since the sum of theparts is not the whole, Ecole Centrale Paris has beenoering to a limited number of 4th year students (180,since year 2004) a so called ``active learning'' activity
named ``Integrated Design of Synchrotron Beam­line''2).
For a week, full time, the students are given the op­
portunity to see for themselves ``what it feels like to
act as an engineer''. The purpose is to bring the stu­
dents to an acute awareness of the richness of theircurriculum, how their disciplines can be interconnect­
ed and their relationship to the ``real life''.

3. At the crossroad of an engineer train­
ing: The ``design of a synchrotron
beamline'' activity
After four years of successful presentation to thestudents, the multidisciplinary training ``Integrated
Design of a Synchrotron Beamline'', still appears as arather unique teaching experiment1).

a. The synchrotron beamline seen as a peda­
gogical toolTo get started, no particular acquaintance withstorage ring, accelerator or even synchrotron radiation(SR) physics is required. Students have to feel that,even with their modest knowledge in physics, theyshould be able to bring a signicant, though partial,
contribution to the design of a beamline.
The rst morning of the week (Table 2), they are
given two introductory talks (60 minutes each) explain­
ing what SR is about, how it is generated, what it canbe used for, what are the key elements of a beamline
and what are the constraints an engineer is facing inthat particular area.
Some emphasis is given to show what makes syn­chrotron radiation a particularly useful tool for imag­
ing purposes in medicine of course (more powerful andversatile than the usual X­ray tube used for radio­
grams) or in biology, chemistry and materials science
which are the most appropriate areas that appeal tostudents at this level.
Typically, a team is made of 21 students who will
share the task to virtually build the beamline. They are
splitted into four groups, each corresponding to one
key component of the beamline. The extra student will
act as the team leader. The task the students are thenfacing is the following: Given a set of 6 GeV electrons
bunches at 200 mA current (standard parameters at
the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility), eachgroup is asked to design one of the following fourparts of the ``synchrotron beamline'': The ``insertion device'' (ID). The global frame isprovided as a numerical model under CATIA V5
software3). Students should design the appropriate
magnetic lattice for a given experiment (period,
length, strength, magnets . . .) and propose amechanical solution for precisely and securely
driving the system. They should be able to explain
the physics behind the SR emission process andwhat drives the spectrum characteristics. Students
will acquire enough knowledge to motivate theirchoice between a wiggler and an undulator. Fi­
nally the spectrum is computed using the XOP
software4). It is this spectrum that will be used by
the other groups downstream.
 The ``beam conditioning'' (BC). Students are ex­pected to use their basic knowledge in crystal­lography, solid state physics and electromag­
netism to explain how a perfect crystal (possiblywith a focusing mirror) can be used to extract aparticular set of wavelengths. By the end of theweek, they are to provide a computer model of themonochromator with its driving system (with therequested precision). A well dimensioned coolingsystem must be included in the design.
 At the very end of the beamline, the ``sample en­
vironment'' (SE). Depending on the team, it can,for example, be a microscope using the X­rays if
one is to conduct an element specic imaging of
biological cells or, at another scale, a patient chairfor performing a coronary angiography. This
component of the beamline is often the one spe­úËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3  143

cically designed for a particular experiment. It isthus at this level that the students are requested to
calculate the photon beam specs such as the pho­ton ux, the bandwidth(s) and the beam geomet­
ry. In the two above mentioned examples, these
specs are very dierent. First, the angiography ex­periment requires high energy photons (3040
KeV, contrast agent absorption edge) and uores­
cence microscopy deals with valence electrons andnecessitates low energy photons (around 6 KeV,in the case of chromium imaging). Second, for areal time imaging of a patient coronary an­
giography, the beam should have a typical trans­verse size of the order of 1015 cm while element
specic microscopy on biological cells need the x­rays beam to be focused down to a fraction of a
micrometer.
 The ``front­end'' (FE). All students are to be a­ware of all the security issues involved in the de­sign of a beamline. They are told that electrons
and X­rays are strongly scattered or absorbed by
the ambient air and therefore most of the beam
path is conned in a secured succession of highvacuum pipes. The design of the beamline needs
to include such a protection of the vacuum, in­sured by a system of valves separating the elec­
trons in the storage ring from the synchrotron
beamline. This is usually where the complex issueof heat load is rst experienced by the students.
Even from such a partial description, the underlying
complexity of each of these objects clearly appears toour students. Moreover, no object being completely
isolated from the others, the mutual dependencies areconditioned, at least, by the amount of heat each com­ponent should evacuate. Moreover the students also
quickly become aware of how the spectrum is modiedthrough the propagation of the radiation in the beam­line from one component to another.
Teams of 21 students per beamline, each divided
into four subgroups (ID, BC, SE, FE) of ve students
plus one team leader. They are asked to design, scale
and possibly optimize the above mentionned four key
components in order to virtually build a technological­
ly sound synchrotron beamline for a dedicated pur­pose. Since year 2005, two teams are assigned respec­tively an X­rays uorescence microscopy and a highenergy X­rays coronary angiography beamlines de­signs (respectively based on ESRF ID21 and ID17
beamlines).

b.

Expected pedagogical outcomes

It can be argued that such a teaching is very muchinspired from traditional ``project based training''.
However, there are interesting points that bring adierent dimension to this activity.
Firstly, the time structure is very short, it stands in asingle week, full time. Very often projects are spread

144  úËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3

Table 2 A typical ``Design week''. Note that students are asked togive intermediate deliverables every evening shortly after
their interview with the experts. A nal report (built up
from their modied intermediate results) is posted on thecollaborative workspace on the evening of day 5. Training
for oral presentation is typically on week after day 5. The
nal defense and debrieng take place about 3 weeks later.

over a much longer period of time with few hours aweek dedicated to the activity. Here, the schedule is socondensed that if the Monday, hardly any student
know anything about synchrotron radiation andmechanical design, by the Friday, they all know thedierences between a monochromator, a mirror and alter, what power density is bearable for aluminium ortungsten, how one can play with mechanical properties
and thermal conductivity of In­Ga and why a 3D
CAD­model should be parameterized.
As the work progresses and the end of the day ap­
proaches (with the requirement to deliver the inter­mediate results), there is a rise in the stress of eachgroup. This increasing tension generated by the neces­sity to satisfy daily deliverables, becomes a driving
force of the learning process. The reason is that it en­
courages each member of the group to be moreecient and nd his role in the design corresponding
to his own area of expertise for the mutual benets ofthe team as a whole. Students who are unfamiliar withgroup activities, in particular the necessity of sharing,learning from others, distributing evenly the wor­
kload, become aware of the role played by the team, ina matter of hours. They rapidly learn that the diculty
is not only brought by the isolated problems but by
their interplay. The complexity is to account for every
aspects of the problem so that the nal design inte­
grates explicit and implicit constraints. The specica­tions for each beamline, presented to the students therst day, are usually concentrated on a single sheet ofpaper, written in a style very dierent from the one en­gsbNX ¡ The Synchrotron Radiation beamline as a pedagogical tool in engineering schools and universities

countered in academic problems. Here no exercise isgiven. It is a typical ill formulated, opened problem,
close to those encountered in some Problem Based
Learning approaches. It becomes immediately obviousthat there is probably no unique ideal solution. The
almost innite number of degrees of freedom will ap­
pear progressively. Though many information are deli­vered, much more is hidden behind the simple words.
One single value generates the necessity to understandsome highly technical problems, implying a whole setof constraints and yielding a bibliographic search, agreat deal of computations or a mere curve tting.
Though ECP teachers in physics, thermal transfer,mechanics­CAD and materials choices are readily and
immediately available upon request, they merely
represent the academic side of the minimum necessary
knowledge in basics sciences. In particular, none ofthem can reliably state on the viability of the global de­sign of the beamline. So as to avoid unnecessary wan­dering in the design, and in order to be confronted to
the reality, daily conception choices are to be validated
by a remote submission to outside consultants. These
consultants are experts in synchrotron beamline de­signs, working in one of the synchrotron facilities
around the world (Grenoble and Saclay in France,
Brookhaven in USA or Hyogo in Japan). Suchremoteness amply justies the resort of synchronous
collaborative tools as explained in the section 5.
In that framework, the students are to imagine, de­sign, calculate, scale but they are also facing the neces­sity to check the coherence of every values or pieces ofdrawings. As they become confronted with the adventof a tremendous ux of information, they thereby
learn not to take for granted unexpected numericalvalues as well as the necessity to balance the ``reasona­ble doubt'' and faith in their co­workers.

4. A ``wide spectrum'' of interconnecteddisciplines
As mentioned earlier, in this course, we decided torely on ve major disciplines: physics, mechanics andmechanical design, materials science, heat transfer andhuman sciences. We here give a brief overview of whatneeds, diculties and work is expected from the stu­
dents in each of these topics.

a) Physics
In this particular project, the initial orders of magni­
tude are conditioned by the type of experiment to be
performed on the sample. Hence, the study requires anaccurate initial estimate of the desired X­Rays ux in agiven bandwidth for a specic beam shape. These cal­culations involve a good understanding of the physicalprocesses (absorption, uorescence, scattering . . .)and will prove to be crucial for the work of the entire
team. More often than not the values have to be re­ned during the week as the signal to noise ratio turns
out to be shadowed by severe over heating issues. Stu­
dents in dierent groups will encounter dierent
aspects of physics related to their recent curriculum: ofcourse electromagnetic spectrum from a relativistic
particle but also Bragg law, index of refraction andplasma frequency, crystallography and structure fac­
tors computations. As an example for the latter, stu­
dent build up a simple computer code using interpola­tion form of atomic scattering form factors. They canthen choose the best type of crystal and miller indicesfor their monochromator. They will later use a more
professionally oriented program such as XOP. All
these dicult topics that where once taught to the stu­
dents, with no connection to a clear necessity, now
take a new importance and students who previously
did not show any particular interest in physics becomeaware that such aspects can not be avoided. On this oc­
casion, physics does become part of the standard en­gineer's toolbox.
b) Mechanics and mechanical design:
From a mechanical design perspective, the students
are basically required to conduct a real preliminaryplan. This is new and often has a destabilizing eect onthem. In priority, they are to work on orders of magni­
tude allowing for the choice of technologies. They
should therefore nd the most appropriate model.
Thereby, one breaks with the usual progress of a clas­
sical course in which the model and the underlying
hypothesis are ordinarily provided to the students by
the teacher at the beginning of the course.
The nal goal is here to quickly converge towards anarchitecture scheme where the main components will
be integrated into a 3D CAD model under CATIA V5.
Students will then be asked to justify their choicesfrom a technical as well as a nancial point of view.
Assessment of the work is not based on the level ofcomplexity of the models or theories but rather on therelevance of the studies that where conducted. One
new aspect that is worth noting is the necessity for the
students to progress iteratively in the conception work
to bring their model to a viable result.
One should note that, usually, few students sponta­
neously recourse to the use of appropriate numerical
tools to help them with such an iterative process: fromthe mere EXCEL spread sheet to more advanced
programming tools such as MatLab or Python shortúËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3  145

programming. This course clearly emphasizes thenecessity to recourse to that type of numerical tools
when one deals with an actual exploratory study.
c) Science of materials
Diamond, steel, copper, indium, gallium, silicon,tungsten, aluminium, neodymium, boron, samarium,
lead, . . . This list is only a sample of the wide variety
of materials encountered by the students during theirdesign of a synchrotron beamline. Much more than asimple catalogue of materials, the present active learn­
ing activity oers to the student the unique opportuni­
ty to address the question of the choice of materials in­side a complete design process. Whereas traditional
lectures and exercises sessions must introduce all thebasic properties (crystallography, mechanical proper­
ties, elasticity, plasticity, defects, corrosion . . .), here
the students are asked to use this basic knowledge in apractical case. The rst challenge for the students is
probably to point out the key material properties re­quired by the various, and often extreme, working
conditions. The rst material selection is done using
the performance indexes as proposed by Ashby5). Thisqualitative selection must then be rened in terms ofquantitative values of the required material properties.
This quantitative step leads the student to face thephysical limits of materials: e.g. nding a ductile
material having a melting temperature of 10000K is
rather dicult. . . . If they cannot change the design toreduce the imposed temperature, they will need amaterial having a high fusion temperature and a goodthermal conductivity in order to cool it eciently. This
leads to an additional material property requirement!
Mechanical and thermal calculations enable them toevaluate the various stresses and constraints their ob­
ject will face. But such calculations can only be doneusing the correct material properties . . . the design
process is thus iterative and strongly underlines theconnections between theoretical subjects (thermaltransfer, mechanical design, mechanics, joining proc­
esses, . . .).
At the end of the week, students have become
familiar with the practical importance of the Youngmodulus, the melting temperature, the ultimate tensile
strength, the density, the thermal conductivity, thethermal dilatation, the ductility, the magnetism. . . .
In addition to these intrinsic material properties, thestudent are also asked to check the compatibility ofthere choices: is gallium susceptible to embrittle cop­per by penetrating along its grain boundaries? Can thematerial chosen to support the insertion device mag­nets be also magnetic? Finally, once the material
choice is almost made, the question of price and prac­
tical realization arises. What kind of forming and join­
ing process can be used (foundry, machining, powder
metallurgy, welding . . .) for the object that was
designed? These essential questions lead the students
to look for the actual industrial processes and possibly

146  úËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3

identify their various advantages and drawbacks.
d) Heat transfer
Thermal aspects of the ``problem`` are not given on
the rst day. The students know that they have somechoices to do concerning the global design of thebeamline, some dealing with the materials, others for
the X­ray energies, but no direct question is asked thatwould drive them to some heat transfer modelling.
They must discover by themselves that they will inevit­
ably have to include ecient cooling devices in theirdesign of the beamline.
Students use thermal properties to choose the bestmaterial for a given purpose, but they rst must denevery precisely this purpose on heat transfer criteria.
For instance, the team in charge of the the front end
fast shutter must compare materials according to ther­mal diusivity in spite of thermal conductivity, be­cause of transient heat transfer phenomena involved in
the use of this device.
Calculating a convective heat transfer power is easy
when the ow rates, the sizes of the tubes, the thermal
properties, and so on, are already known. It can
noticeably be more dicult to do some reverse en­gineering on the same problem. That means: design asystem that will provide some given heat transfer ex­change without any knowledge of the geometry andthe sizes, the materials, the uids, the inlet and outlet
temperatures, even the type of heat transfer mode one
canuse
betweenconduction,
convection,
radiation. . . . It becomes even more dicult when one
must take into account some specications as maximal
ow rates (for non­vibration reason), maximal size(for reasons involving physical geometry of the experi­ment), economic limitations. . . .
This pedagogical activity is the rst occasion for the
students to encounter a non­linear computation as wellas many necessary feedbacks and many unwanted
dead end modellings. They must sometimes use Com­sol [6] or equivalent nite elements numerical codes
because of the failure of the ``blessed analytical'' one
dimensional methods.
e) Human sciences for a better team work
The Human and Social Sciences Dept at Ecole Cen­
trale Paris has a wide panel of activities. The main goal
is to help the future engineers and managers to develop
their knowledge of themselves and the outside world,
especially that of companies. The department oers ateaching aiming at encouraging initiative and teamspirit as well as a help for a careful choice of the stu­
dentsfrst eld of activity and work experience.
Within the framework of this ``synchrotron course''
and based on the principle that two roles are present inall group activitya functional role and a behaviouralrole­, the Human and Social Sciences teachers havehere two goals: rstly to develop studentsfteamwork
abilities and secondly to improve their oral expression
and communication skills with the overall aim ofgsbNX ¡ The Synchrotron Radiation beamline as a pedagogical tool in engineering schools and universities

strengthening conceptualisation and the ability to put
theory into practice. The ``subgroups'' for each beam­line team are organized by means of the ``Belbin
test''7). Given the personality types and needs of eachteam, this tool enables roles to be identied and allo­cated.
The cultural diversity of the students in this project(in 2007, 12 dierent nationalities were represented wi­
thin the 42 students) should result in a rich andmeaningful dialogue yet, at the same time, demon­
strating the diculties of group co­operation toachieve a complex technical end result.
By combining a theoretical background, the Belbinrole model, group work functionality, communicationand the principles of progress meetings as well as feed­back and analysis of the key drivers to project success,participants understand and develop those lasting andtransferable skills needed for the teamwork situations
they will encounter in their future careers.
Each student is evaluated on his/her ability to
become part of a group, to work in a team and his/her
involvement in and contribution to the project as awhole.

cations. Though no student is particularly familiar
with that type of professional videoconferencing, thetools are rapidly adopted, especially as the experts,
who are better acquainted with their use, systematic
resort to them during the daily 20 minutes interviews.
Students indeed become aware of the power of ``a little
sketch'', even a primitive one, to explain a structure ora principle diagram in the framework of a pilot study
where the time saving can be crucial. Fig. 1 shows sucha modest drawing for a double bounce mirror, jointly``elaborated'' on a shared whiteboard by the students
and the expert during a critical analysis of a design
choice.
It is essential to note that these collaborative tools
have been rapidly adopted by all the participants

5. A Numerical Environment for a bettereciency
Synchronous communication tools allow for a re­mote collaborative work. In this activity, students canconsult the remote experts (France, USA, Japan) using
a common whiteboard, sharing documents and appli­

Fig. 1

A rough (preliminary) sketch (``hand drawing with themouse'') of a harmonics rejecting mirror shared by the par­ties during the videoconference on a numerical whiteboard.

Fig. 2 The Windchill collaborative workspaceúËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3  147

Fig. 3

Table 3

CatiaV5 model for an harmonics rejection double mirror system and its hexapod elaborated by the students at theend of the 4 days work. Note that there is a huge dierence with the initial hand­drawing (Fig. 1) shared with theexperts on the internet video­conference whiteboard. All values and choice of materials were chosen by the stu­
dents using knowledge from the courses of their curriculum. The hexapod part turned out to be too complicatedto be designed by the students.

Cumulative results of an anonymous opinion poll about the activity over the last 4 years (not all students answered the poll)

Anonymous Survey on 101 students for years 2005/2006/2007/2008

Denitely yes

Yes

No

Denitely no

No opinion

Think the course is useful to future engineers

73

28

0

0

0

The activity strengthened the interest in basic sciences of the students
curriculum

40

37

13

0

1

Found the double approach ``hard/soft sciences'' important for a better
pedagogical impact

42

39

13

2

3

Useful for better awareness of condition for successful team work

35

40

13

0

1

Found that collaborative work was essential to this project

42

46

7

1

2

Would advise other students to take this course

80

15

2

0

1

thanks to their easiness to implement. No particularsophisticated function is expected but emphasis is put
on ergonomic aspects in implementation, installation
and use.
After a careful benchmarking, we chose the solution
provided by Webex in its ``Application Service
Provider'' mode[8]. In this conguration, neither web
server nor software is installed on the campus. We are
mere web users of the services through the internet.
One advantage of this approach is that rewalls are nolonger an issue.
Asynchronous communication tools allow for
managing the ux of documents between the students
and the experts. As for the synchronous communica­tion tools, we also chose an outside provider of col­laborative workspace, Windchill9). Here also, the fun­ctionalities are limited, but the tools are easy to setup,through a friendly web navigator as displayed on Fig.
2.
The use of such a virtual workspace however brings
additional constraints as compared with less structured
and faster information dissemination means such as e­

148  úËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3

mail or FTP. It is thus vital, in the initial phase, to en­force its use notably for daily deliverables and ques­
tions postings to the experts. Quickly, the students dis­cover the benets of this tool and come to adopt iteven for internal management of their documents.
Moreover, the students rapidly become aware of thenecessity to go through many iterations of the design
process before they can converge to a solution ac­
counting for the numerous constraints implicit or ex­
plicitly in the specications. Use of modelling, compu­
tation, analysis or simulation tools is strongly en­
couraged. Fig. 3 shows a parameterized model for aharmonic rejection double mirror system obtainedwith CatiaV5. It allowed the students for evaluatingdierent congurations by a mere change in geometri­cal, mechanical or physical parameters values.

6. CONCLUSION: the activity from a stu­
dent perspective
This pedagogical activity brings numerous
challenges to the students at the scientic and technicalgsbNX ¡ The Synchrotron Radiation beamline as a pedagogical tool in engineering schools and universities

levels (degrees of freedoms, number of parameters in
the design) as well as at the project team set up level(remote experts, multidisciplinary team coordinationc). Let us emphasize the fact that the purpose of suchan activity is not to actually build a synchrotron beam­
line! Our goal is pedagogical and the teachers teamaims at bringing the students to an acute awareness of
their scientic potential, the connection between thedisciplines of the curriculum, the power of a well or­
ganized team work and the numerous possibilities of acollaborative numerical environment.
Table 3 reports the results from a survey conductedduring 3 years among the students participating to theactivity. The ``Integrated Design of synchrotron beam­
line'' activity proves to bring the students close to in­
dustrials issues that make vital the use of such scienticknowledge, tools and methodologies. By making thestudents actors of a project, derived from a real case,teachers thus show how and why they are to be used in
the industry, especially in the case of multiphysics
complex cases in the aim of which engineer­students at
Ecole Centrale Paris are being trained.

Acknowledgments
We wish to thank our colleagues at Ecole Centrale
Paris participating in setting up this activity. We fur­ther express our gratitude to the ``experts'' Y. Dabin,
J. Susini, R. Barrett and B. Baker at the European

Synchrotron Radiation Facility, F. Bertran, O. Mar­couille, T. Moreno and M. Idir at synchrotron Soleil,
P. Montanez (formally) at the National SynchrotronLight Source, X.­M. Marechal at Spring8 and J.­P.
Merlet at INRIA. Their participation to this course ismost certainly the key to what turned out to be (andstill is) a great human experience and a true pedagogi­
cal success.

REFERENCES
1) For more information visit: http://www.ecp.fr2) For more information (in French) visit:
http://www.etudes.ecp.fr/appli­synchrotron3) Catia V5 is a CAD software distributed by Dassaut Systemes.
Information for pedagogical purposes can be found (in French)at http://catia.etudes.ecp.fr4) M. S áanchez del Ráo and R. J. Dejus. `` XOP 2.1: A new versionof the X­ray optics software toolkit'' Synchrotron Radiation
Instrumentation: Eighth International Conference, edited by T.
Warwick et al. (2004) American Institute of Physics, pages7847875) M. Ashby, ``Materials selection in mechanical design'', Butter­
worth­Heinemann (2005)
6) Comsol is a multiphysics simulator environment. More nforma­tion at http://www.comsol.com/
7) R. M. Belbin, Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail
(Butterworth Heinemann, 2nd ed., 2003)
8) Webex is a videoconferencing solution.
More at http://www.webex.com
9) Windchill is distributed by Parametric Technology Corporation(PTC) at http://www.ptc.com

úËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3  149 ÒÐî 
Pascal Bernaud
Associate professor in physics at
Ecole Centrale Paris. His lastresearch topics are in cryotechnic
combustion. He is now mostly in­volved in international aairs, es­
pecially student exchanges with
Latin­America countries, andPhD students everywhere.
Antonia Ceppi
Psychosociologist and lecturer at
Ecole Centrale Paris. She coor­dinates and runs social science
modules in leadership and com­munication skills. She is also a
consultant in change manage­
ment and stress management.
Benjamin Fournier
Research engineer at Commis­
sariat a l'Energie Atomique. He
is in charge of high temperature
testing and modelling of im­proved steels (ODS, martensit­
ic, . . .) for generation IV nuclear
reactors. Special emphasis on
creep, fatigue, EBSD, statistics
and micromechanical modelling.

150  úËõ May 2009 Vol.22 No.3

Jean­Michel Gillet
Professor and researcher at theStructures, Proprietes et Modeli­sation des Solides laboratory at
Ecole Centrale Paris. He is thehead of the physics department.
His research focuses on quantum
physics and chemistry modellingof x­rays and neutrons scatteringexperiments. He also teaches at
Ecole Centrale Beijing (China).
Pascal Morenton
Assistant Professor and the CAD
manager of Ecole Centrale Paris.
He is also in charge of the``Product Lifecycle Manage­
ment'' program in the initial aswell as the lifelong education cur­riculum. P. Morenton acted as aconsultant at CERN for PLM im­
plementation.