In the era of industry 4.0 businesses are pursuing applications of technological developments towards increased digitization. This in turn necessitates continuous and increasing demand for competence development of professionals. This paper reports a study of the design of university courses targeted towards professionals and investigate how such an educational incentive can act as a catalyst for application of technologies for industry 4.0, including simulation. Quantitative data is collected from fifteen courses addressing the competence need in manufacturing industry, and the qualitative data includes ten focus groups with course participants from companies. The results highlight that the course design enables knowledge exchange between university and industry and between participants. Moreover the pedagogy of working on real cases can facilitate opportunities for introducing new technologies to management. The study shows that the educational incentive explored can act as a catalyst for application of simulation and technologies within industry 4.0 in manufacturing industry.

Fatigue crack initiation in engineering components is predominantly associated with tensile surface residual stresses or stress raisers caused by discontinuities or mechanical notches. During welding, surface residual stresses arising from plastic mismatch due to the temperature gradient can accelerate the initiation of cracks during cyclic fatigue testing. Direct energy surface treatment is currently considered a viable post-processing methodology for modifying surfaces within the weld zone to improve fatigue life. This paper discusses results obtained during experimental research, investigating the effect of direct energy surface treatment on surface residual stresses, microstructure, and fatigue life of cylindrical rotary friction welded Ti-6Al-4 V samples. Direct energy post-processing technique aided in improving the fatigue life of friction welded specimens by modifying the surface microstructure, introducing a uniform refined and homogenous structure in the welded region. This near-surface refined microstructure inhibited crack initiation in the welded region, shifting initiation sites to an area adjacent to the modified surface region. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd