About
Bart Blockmans
Engineer · PhD · Simulation consultant
This website is a curated archive of simulation work I developed outside confidential client projects. Many projects started as LinkedIn posts: short technical stories built around a model, an animation, or a question I wanted to understand more deeply. As the collection grew, I wanted to give them a more permanent home.
My work sits at the intersection of mechanical engineering, numerical simulation, programming, AI, and scientific computing. Some projects are compact analytical models; others are larger custom workflows built for questions that are difficult to answer with off-the-shelf tools. What connects them is the same modelling philosophy: start from the underlying physics, add data-driven methods where they are useful, and keep the model only as complex as the question requires.
Background
I am a Belgian mechanical engineer and independent consultant. I completed my PhD at KU Leuven LMSD on model reduction for dynamic contact simulations in flexible multibody dynamics. Since then, my work has expanded into vehicle dynamics, cycling performance, AI-assisted computer vision, industrial inspection, energy systems, and other domains where mechanics interacts with control, aerodynamics, sensing, data, or computation.
Across these domains, I am drawn to challenging simulation problems: identifying the relevant physics, finding the computational bottleneck, and developing tailored software tools that make the problem practical to solve, inspect, and understand.
2023–present
Independent simulation consultant
Automotive · Machinery · Motorsport · Cycling · AI
2018–2023
Senior researcher & project lead
KU Leuven LMSD · Flanders Make
2012–2018
PhD researcher
KU Leuven LMSD
2010–2012
M.Sc. Mechanical Engineering
KU Leuven
2006–2010
M.Sc. Industrial Engineering
KU Leuven Group T
Expertise
Application areas
Methods
Under the Hood
This website was built largely with Claude Code, guided by a set of markdown prompt files that I prepared to define the website's design, interaction logic, content rules, and deployment workflow. Most project texts were drafted by Claude based on my original LinkedIn posts, and only selectively reviewed or edited afterwards. Some wording may therefore still carry traces of that process.
The prompt files are available here for anyone who wants to build a similar portfolio from their own technical archive:
Download the website prompt files