Employing the Concurrent Design Philosophy in Developing an Engineering Design Science Programme

In Memoriam: Dr. Clive L. Dym (1942–2016)

Over the past decade the software products available for solid modeling, dynamic, stress, thermal, and flow analysis, and computer-aiding manufacturing (CAM) have become more powerful, affordable, and easier to use. At the same time it has become increasingly important for students to gain concurrent engineering design and systems integration experience. The purpose of this paper is to communicate the dramatic effect that the new software has had on the way that mechanical drawing and engineering design are taught at Daniel Webster College (DWC). The two year design experience at DWC is more extensive than the design experience that students normally have during the first two years of most four-year engineering programs. The evolution of this design experience will be presented. Three of the presenters of this paper are students. Two will present robotic arm projects; the third will present a supersonic gun project.

This research focuses on the development of a quantitative intelligent system for implementing concurrent engineering design. The paper first discusses the task of concurrent engineering design and the basic requirements for conducting integrated concurrent engineering design. The proposed quantitative intelligent system approach combines qualitative reasoning, based upon design and manufacturing knowledge, and quantitative evaluation and optimization, conducted using design information and manufacturing data generated in the knowledge-based reasoning. The method allows considerations on non-operating principle aspects of a product to be incorporated into the design phase, such as manufacturing, maintenance, service, recycle, etc., with an emphasis on production costs. The proposed method serves as a convenient software tool for gathering information required in the concurrent engineering design process and integrates tasks from different parts of the product development life cycle, particularly function design, manufacturability analysis and production cost estimation. A prototype software system is developed based upon this method using Smalltalk-80. In the prototype system, concurrent engineering design is carried out by: (1) describing and representing design requirements; (2) generating feasible design candidates and evaluating their design functions; (3) representing design geometry; (4) finding the associated production processes and predicting the production costs of each feasible design; and (5) identifying the costeffective design that satisfies given design requirements and requires minimum production costs.

Computational support for concept exploration has been a research development in the last two decades, and the ascent of AI tools such as Chat GPT and generative design is further expanding it. Mechanical engineering tends to focus on more stringent functional requirements and compliance with regulation, and while the potential of AI developments to support it exists, it also likely requires significant oversight by the human. The levels of helpfulness/need for oversight and checks by humans are explored in terms of where AI could be beneficial in the mechanical engineering design process, how this could be supported, and how reliable can it be in that context. Exploring the use of AI in mechanical engineering design and the level of trust placed on its outcomes is an important question for future engineering design development, especially since AI and machine learning are improving exponentially. Exploration of students’ perception of AI and its objective usefulness will be contrasted, by performing a comparison between designs conducted with and without AI support. AI tools used will focus on product design specification generation, concept image generation and generative design. Then recommendations will be given on tools that are currently considered to be helpful for mechanical design development, highlighting the positives and negatives of the approach using AI and potential for adoption of AI in engineering design education.

As products become ever more diversified, their life cycles are becoming shorter. To reduce production costs, increased process automation and concurrent design are priorities. Therefore, a collaborative integrated design system is crucial in the mold design and manufacturing process. This research develops a collaborative navigation system for concurrent mold design within the computer-aided design (CAD) browser, using Pro/Web.Link as the core tool. Providing both concurrent engineering and collaborative design functions, the navigation system is capable of assisting designers in accomplishing 3D mold development efficiently and accurately with the help of the standard component library and design decision-making system. The results show significant time savings over other mold design process methodologies.

This paper presents ongoing work to standardize model-based system engineering as a complement to point design development in the conceptual design phase of deep space missions. It summarizes two first steps towards practical application of this capability within the framework of concurrent engineering design teams and their customers. The first step is standard generation of system sensitivities models as the output of concurrent engineering design sessions, representing the local trade space around a point design. A review of the chosen model development process, and the results of three case study examples, demonstrate that a simple update to the concurrent engineering design process can easily capture sensitivities to key requirements. It can serve as a valuable tool to analyze design drivers and uncover breakpoints in the design. The second step is development of rough-order- of-magnitude, broad-range-of-validity design models for rapid exploration of the trade space, before selection of a point design. At least one case study demonstrated the feasibility to generate such models in a concurrent engineering session. The experiment indicated that such a capability could yield valid system-level conclusions for a trade space composed of understood elements. Ongoing efforts are assessing the practicality of developing end-to-end system-level design models for use before even convening the first concurrent engineering session, starting with modeling an end-to-end Mars architecture.

Concurrent engineering: Automation, tools, and techniques

The use of emulator methods in mechanical engineering design is more limited than in electrical and electronic engineering. The concept is to replace a computer aided engineering simulator with a fast statistical emulator built using a designed computer experiment, which can then be used to facilitate optimization and robust engineering design. This case study draws out lessons for application in mechanical design.

Project-based learning in an engineering-design course – developing mechanical- engineering graduates for the world of work

1 INTRODUCTION Design education usually employs project-based learning, in which students learn to research, plan, design and reflect on the creation of technological projects [1], [2]. Student experience issues may influence students' design process, as well as their perception of professional knowledge development. Studies have pointed out students are ill-informed about design education when entering university [3]. In the field of design, although there have been student surveys to analyze design thinking skills and for assessing design literacy. However, these studies are primarily assessment tools, and do not investigate students’ attitudes or experiences of their design courses. While several studies focus on measuring students’ cognitive knowledge, assessments of affective variables, such as attitude, are far fewer in number. The objective of this study was to investigate student experiences, specifically the issues and challenges faced by students in three foundational design courses – focusing on introductory design, architectural design and engineering design – at the . We investigate issues such as how do students experience various instruction modes such as lectures and studio; and their experience of working individually or as teams in the three foundational design courses. 2 METHOD We conducted a survey in three foundational design courses, in both online and paper format. The survey comprised quantitative and qualitative components. Respondents consisted of 248 students from the introductory design course, 48 students from the introductory architectural design course and 71 students from the engineering design course. Respondents rated their perceptions on 23 items in two types of questions: Likert, semantic differential. Additionally, they provided their input in two open-ended questions. 3 RESULTS A principal component analysis conducted on the data revealed five factors that primarily contributed to students’ perception of foundational design courses: (1) the fun aspects of design, (2) the stressful aspects of design, (3) Course Pressures, (4) Student temperament issues, (5) Teamwork experience. Performance pressures majorly affected student experience in all three courses. The architectural design course was seen to be the most enjoyable for students, as fun scores were higher than the stress scores, and low course pressures. The engineering design course was observed to be very stressful for students, with low scores for fun. 4 SIGNIFICANCE Student perception of foundational design courses is important because it can be used to drive forward changes in curriculum and pedagogy. While this study uses data from one university, the issues reported here are generic and relevant for instructors developing design courses across different parts of the world. Research in student experience and perspectives is crucial to develop design education and propel it into the future. REFERENCES [1] Y. Doppelt, “Assessing creative thinking in design-based learning,” International Journal of Technology and Design Education, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 55–65, 2009, [2] N. Lee, “Project methods as the vehicle for learning in undergraduate design education: a typology,” Design Studies, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 541–560, Sep. 2009, [3] A. B. Gencosmanoglu, “Learning, teaching and administration in design education: DESIGNtrain Project: Training tools for developing design education,” in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010.

Designers often gather information, for instance through stakeholder or domain expert meetings, to understand their design problems and develop effective solutions. However, few previous studies have provided in-depth descriptions of novice engineering designers’ approaches to conducting information gathering meetings. In this preliminary study, we analyzed data from six capstone mechanical engineering design teams to identify the types of individuals from whom teams gathered information, when these meetings occurred, and how teams solicited information during meetings. Teams in our study exhibited a range of information gathering behaviors that aligned with recommended practices, particularly in their early meetings. We also observed relatively few instances of teams exhibiting behaviors that were less similar to recommended practices during their meetings. However, our findings revealed two key trends across teams that represented specific opportunities for improvement and that may reflect characteristic novice approaches to conducting information gathering meetings. First, teams explored domain experts’ perspectives in depth during meetings and met with additional domain experts to inform their projects. Teams' meetings with project partners contained few instances of deep exploratory information gathering behaviors in comparison. In addition, teams seemed to finalize design decisions during early design meetings and were less likely to conduct information gathering meetings during later design phases. The comprehensive descriptions of novice mechanical engineering designers’ approaches provided in our preliminary study provide an entry point for further investigations that can inform engineering training, tools, and pedagogy for conducting effective meetings.

PrefaceThe International Conference on Applications and Design in Mechanical Engineering 2017 (ICADME 2017) was held on 21-22 August 2017 in Penang, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Malaysia. ICADME 2017 was organized by Mechanical Engineering Programme in School of Mechatronic Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis.The ICADME 2017 aims to provide a platform for participants from diverse field of Mechanical Engineering backgrounds to exchange ideas and findings to promote cooperation, networking as well as knowledge sharing in both engineering practice and research in higher education. The conference includes the fields of Applied Mechanics, Themofluids and Energy as well as Design and Manufacturing. The conference received more than 100 papers from Malaysia and other countries over the world. After a rigorous peer-review process, 84 papers were accepted. The accepted papers that focused on theory, applications, design and experimental studies relevant to mechanical engineering field were invited to present in this conference.I wish to record my gratitude to all reviewers, both local and international, for their time and effort in reviewing the papers. Their feedbacks to the authors have been excellent and useful to ensure the high quality of papers for the conferences. My sincere thanks also go to all sponsors for their generosity. Last but not least, I would like to thank also the organizing committee members for their hard work, cooperation and suggestions in ensuring the success of this conference.Ir. Dr. Khairul Salleh BasaruddinChairmanICADME 2017

Industry and students clamor for increased training related to engineering design and analysis methods. Often, students are hired based on the suite of software packages and Design for Manufacturing methods with which they are familiar as opposed to their knowledge of the fundamentals and their ability to formalize and solve open ended design problems. In support of a domain-centric design education, some of the trends that are driving the increased domain emphasis in design education are documented including decreasing computing cost, decreasing communication costs, and decreasing engineering tenures. The paper then discusses the ramifications of these trends on design education and design practice as measurable by the availability of the mechanical engineering design curricula, design publications, and design patents. Finally, a domain-centric design education paradigm is proposed that suggests the differentiation of Mechanical Engineering programs through the replacement of traditional machine and product design courses with domain-specific courses with increased technical specialty.Copyright © 2005 by ASME

An Internet-enabled integrated system for co-design and concurrent engineering

An integrated graphical user interface (GUI) for concurrent engineering design of mechanical parts