Computer Aided Design Simulation Software Research Articles

Investigating the Impact of Using a CAD Simulation Tool on Students’ Learning of Design Thinking

Engineering design thinking is hard to teach and still harder to learn by novices primarily due to the undetermined nature of engineering problems that often results in multiple solutions. In this paper, we investigate the effect of teaching engineering design thinking to freshmen students by using a computer-aided Design (CAD) simulation software. We present a framework for characterizing different levels of engineering design thinking displayed by students who interacted with the CAD simulation software in the context of a collaborative assignment. This framework describes the presence of four levels of engineering design thinking—beginning designer, adept beginning designer, informed designer, adept informed designer. We present the characteristics associated with each of these four levels as they pertain to four engineering design strategies that students pursued in this study—understanding the design challenge, building knowledge, weighing options and making tradeoffs, and reflecting on the process. Students demonstrated significant improvements in two strategies—understanding the design challenge and building knowledge. We discuss the affordances of the CAD simulation tool along with the learning environment that potentially helped students move towards Adept informed designers while pursuing these design strategies.

Simulation and Experimental Study of Photogeneration and Recombination in Amorphous-Like Silicon Thin Films Deposited by 27.12 MHz Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

Amorphous-like silicon (a-Si:H-like) thin films are prepared by 27.12 MHz plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition technique. The films are applied to p-i-n single junction thin film solar cells with varying i-layer thickness to observe the effects on the short-circuit current density, as well as the open-circuit voltage, fill factor, and conversion efficiency. The most significant experimental result is thatJschas two different behaviors with increasing the i-layer thickness, which can be related to carrier collection efficiency in the long wavelength region. Furthermore, technology computer-aided design simulation software is used to gain better insight into carrier generation and recombination of the solar cells, showing that for the i-layer thickness of 200 to 300 nm the generation dominates the carrier density and thusJsc, whereas for the i-layer thickness of 300 to 400 nm the recombination becomes the leading factor. The simulation results of cell performances are in good agreement with experimental data, indicating that our simulation has great reliability. In addition, the a-Si:H-like solar cells have low light-induced degradation, which in turn can have a great potential to be used for stable and high-efficiency solar cells.