Engineering Design Program Research Articles

Incorporating a Social Implementation Program into a Manufacturing Education Program in Japan: Case Study in Collaboration with a Medical Facility

The College of Technology (called Kosen) is an educational program established in 1962 in Japan to train practical engineers for five years after high school [1]. The curricula of Kosen are characterized by that engineering practice and experiment programs are set from 1st grade and gradually increase as proceed of grade. After that, advanced course for two years was established. In December 2012 the academic policy was changed to bring up the practical and creative engineers who can be active in the various fields. To attain the academic policy Engineering Design Program was attempted. Recently Social Implementation Program was newly proposed instead of Engineering Design Program.In Numazu National College of Technology (NNCT), considerations of the needs of Shizuoka prefecture's research culture project and the success of both Brush up Project of Manufacturing Engineers and Fuji Medical Engineer Training (F-met) Project led the College's staffs to make new curricula based on Social Implementation Program through seven years from teenager. The new curricula were applied from 2013.Several case studies for Social Implementation Program are executed based on the new curricula of NNCT. A case study in collaboration with a medical facility is described as an example of Social Implementation Program and the effect on a manufacturing education is discussed

Viewpoint : Design and Engineering Convergence Education in a Korean and Australian Context

Background In this article, we provide two views on product design engineering education of two design educators from Korea and Australia. We argue that industrial design and engineering design need to be combined in order to support a total design philosophy that aims to improve design education. Therefore, the changing direction of design education for a total design perspective — and Korean and Australian design education — including industry situations are discussed. Product design education in Korea has focused on developing the physical appearance of a product. The concept of engineering design was recently introduced in Korea, and most design schools still belong to art schools. Nowadays, Korean industry is required to develop new businesses in the manufacturing sector, as the industry is facing the situation where ‘fast follower’ strategy does not work for sustained growth and ultimately sustained success. This has grabbed the attention of product design engineers who can develop creative designs and materialize the concepts. In contrast, Australia is facing the end of a mining boom as well as a significant decline in automotive manufacturing. This has forced industry to challenge innovation in manufacturing which has generally been made up of SMEs. As such, the role of product design engineering is emphasized. We conclude that product design engineering education with industrial design and mechanical engineering can be primitive to strengthen the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in both countries. Methods The views provided in this article were assembled from the existing literature, and based on our current experience of running design engineering convergence education programs in undergraduate and graduate levels. In general, the arguments made in this article are not attracted from theoretical and empirical research. They are rather based on our own perspectives of design engineering education. Thus, the views can be more critically based on holistic analyses of industry situations. Results & Conclusions In this article, we examine that how a strong and well-defined product design engineering program within a university context can add significant value to the industry. Product design engineering is a hybrid program that combines analytical engineering sciences with creative industrial design capabilities. It provides a platform that can reshape product offerings for companies that seek to diversify or expand into new markets. Product design engineering links seamlessly toward current industry needs by producing creative design engineers at the forefront of innovation and new product development.

CHALLENGES IN ENGINEERING DESIGN EDUCATION: VERTICAL AND LATERAL LEARNING

Engineering practice and design in particular have gone through several changes during the last two decades whether due to scientific achievements including the evolution in novel engineering materials, computational advancements, globalization and economic constraints as well as the strategic needs which are the drive for innovative engineering. All these factors have impacted and shaped to certain extent the educational system in North America and Canada in particular. Currently, high percentage of the engineering graduates would require extensive training in industry to be able to conduct reliable complex engineering designs supported by scientific verification and validation, understand the complete design stages and phases, and identify the economic and cultural impact on such designs. This task, however, faces great challenges without educational support in such vastly changing economy.Lots of attention has been devoted to engineering design education in the recent years to incorporate engineering design courses supported by team design projects and capstone projects. Nevertheless, the lack of integrated education system towards engineering design programs can undermine the benefits of such efforts. In this paper, observations and analysis of the challenges in engineering design are presented from both academic and industrial points of view. Furthermore, a proposed vertical and lateral engineering education program is discussed. This program is structured to cover every year of the engineering education curricula, which emphasizes on innovative thinking, design strategies, support from and integration with other technical engineering courses, the use of advanced analysis tools, team collaboration, management and leadership, multidisciplinary education and industrial involvement. Its courses have just commenced for freshmen engineering students at the newly launched Mechanical Engineering Department at the Lassonde School of Engineering, York University.

IDEAS: Interdisciplinary Design Engineering and Service

This paper describes the development of the IDEAS: Interdisciplinary Design Engineering and Service program. This program supports and promotes community-based projects as a vehicle for providing students with real-world experience working with clients to solve need-based problems. IDEAS supports senior design projects, an interdisciplinary course on community-based projects, as well as extra-curricular projects through various student organizations. A complete description of the course, common projects and challenges is provided. We describe the benefits of developing long-term community partnerships. Student self-assessments of skills gained shows the course to be successful in providing engineering design experience and soft skills as well as professional sense of the positive societal impact of engineering projects. Course demographics show these projects attract a higher percentage of underrepresented groups than in the overall engineering student population.

Calculation methods of develpment of welding technology of low-carbon low-alloy steels

The application of calculation methods under the development of welding technology of low-carbon low-alloy steels is considered. The aim of paper is to develop the engineering methodology and design program of welding technology of low-carbon low-alloy steels, including the increased and high strength on the basis of presented regression equations. The estimation results of the HAZ expected structural composition for the 09Г2 steel have been analyzed according to the thermokinetic transformation diagram and calculation with the usage of regression equation for different variants of chemical composition provided by the standard. In this case, the task of determination of parameters of mode and technological methods which provide the obtaining of appropriate structure and mechanical properties of the HAZ metal. The calculation procedure of welding mode which provides the optimal structure of the welded joint has been considered using data analysis and on the example of automatic submerged-arc welding of the butt joint of 30 mm thick from the 14ХМНФДР high-strength steel. One of the most important advantages of the considered calculation method is the simplicity of its operation on the computer which simplifies and speeds the work of an engineer and increases the results accuracy. After the analysis of these results the engineer can introduce another value of the preheat temperature and therefore to choose the appropriate structure and mechanical properties of the welded joint. The application of regression equations allows taking into account the specific steel chemical composition and obtaining more trustworthy calculation result comparing to the result of thermokinetic transformation diagram. Moreover, these equations give more full information both on metal structural composition of heat-affected zone and on its mechanical properties. The calculation is easily performed on the computer which allows simplifying and speeding the work of engineer, increasing the results accuracy.

Making the Venus Concept Watch 1.0

Over the past year we have celebrated the 50th anniversary of planetary exploration, which started with the Venus flyby of Mariner-2; and the 35th anniversary of the Pioneer-Venus multi-probe mission where one large and three small probes descended to the surface of Venus, encountering extreme environmental conditions. At the surface of Venus the temperature is about 460°C, and the pressure is 92bar, with a highly corrosive super-critical CO2 atmosphere. At a Venusian altitude of 50km the pressure and temperature conditions are near Earth-like, but the clouds carry sulfuric acid droplets. Deep probe missions to Jupiter and Saturn, targeting the 100bar pressure depth encounter similar pressure and temperature conditions as the Pioneer-Venus probes did. Mitigating these environments is highly challenging and requires special considerations for designs and materials. While assessing such space mission concepts, we have found that there is an overlap between the extreme environments in planetary atmospheres and the environments experienced by deep-sea explorers back on Earth. Consequently, the mitigation approaches could be also similar between planetary probes and diver watches. For example, both need to tolerate about 100bar of pressure—although high temperatures are not factors on Earth. Mitigating these environments, the potential materials are: titanium for the probe and the watch housing; sapphire for the window and glass; resin impregnated woven carbon fiber for the aeroshell׳s thermal protection system and for the face of the watch; and nylon ribbon for the parachute and for the watch band. Planetary probes also utilize precision watches; thus there is yet another crosscutting functionality with diver watches. Our team, from the Innovation Design Engineering Program of the Royal College of Art, has designed and built a concept watch to commemorate these historical events, while highlighting advances in manufacturing processes over the past three to five decades, relevant to both future planetary mission designs and can be used to produce deep diver watches. In this paper we describe our design considerations; give a brief overview of the extreme environments these components would experience on both Venus and Earth; the manufacturing techniques and materials we used to build the Venus Watch; and its outreach potential to bring a distant concept of planetary exploration closer to Earth. We will also address lessons learned from this project and new ideas forward, for the next generation of this concept design.

Digital Model Research on and Design of Large Plate Column

To improve the efficiency of large plate column design, enrich design information and facilitate the analysis design and fabrication, this article puts forward column parts design parameters and the spatial topology should be determined based on the failure forms differences, manufacturing processing batch differences and the particularity of column assembly method and other factors. Moreover, complete digital model of large plate column should be designed on Creo platform. The whole process conforms to the plate column engineering design program, and its design efficiency and rationality of parts and assembly parts are greatly improved.

The First Interior Design Engineering Program in Saudi Arabia: Relevancy to Introduce the Program at Yanbu University College

This paper discusses why Interior Design Engineering (IDE) program has been introduced at Yanbu University College (YUC) of Saudi Arabia. Interior design program is considered as an art program in most universities and in some universities is considered part of architecture schools and not an engineering program. In contrary, IDE program at YUC is designed with emphasis on engineering oriented courses into interior design program. Further research is made to investigate interior design programs offered in Saudi Arabia and compared with IDE program at YUC. The paper concluded that the introduction of IDE program at YUC is relevant as demanded by the profession and graduate students will be benefited to be technically knowledgeable and earning privileges of being engineering graduate holders.

Student Learning in Challenge-Based Engineering Curricula

In recent years, there has been a demand to teach engineering in high schools, particularly using a challenge-based curriculum. Many of these programs have the dual goals of teaching students the engineering design process (EDP), and teaching to deepen their understanding and ability to apply science and math concepts. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, this study examines whether a high school design engineering program accomplishes each of the two goals. During the 2010–2011 school year, over 100 students enrolled in the same design engineering course in seven high schools. Evidence of learning and application of the EDP is accomplished by triangulating student interviews with pre-/post-tests of EDP-related questions and a survey of design engineering beliefs. To determine whether students could apply science and math concepts, we examined content test questions to see if students used science and math ideas to justify their engineering work, and triangulated these results with student interviews. The results are mixed, implying that although there is some learning, application is inconsistent.

INTEGRATING DESIGN THROUGHOUT THE CURRICULUM USING CASE STUDIES

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Contributors

Contributors

Bringing the Everyday Life into Engineering Education

Abstractâ?? To successfully design and engineer solutions for todayâ??s and tomorrowâ??s rapidly changing and expanding global contexts, in which people are confronted with new opportunities and challenges each day, engineering programs should be training their students to become broad based professionals, who are aware of the actual needs, values and behaviors of the people that use their solutions in their everyday life, work or play. This article argues that in order to built such an awareness, engineering students should acquire direct, first-hand experiences of real people in real contexts. It presents a number of techniques that can be used to gain such experiences. Each technique is briefly described and illustrated with examples from our Industrial Design Engineering program. Knowledge, skills and attitude that are acquired through the use of the techniques are listed and reflected upon. Finally, our experiences with implementing the techniques into our program are discussed in view of their relevance for other engineering programs.

Permanent magnet (de‐) magnetization and soft iron hysteresis effects

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to promote practical methods for the numerical modelling of hard magnetic materials and soft ferromagnetic materials in an engineering context (design of electrical machines).Design/methodology/approachObjectives achieved by the use of a practical, semi‐empirical material model that needs modest material data and computer resources. Methods: a focused theoretical specification and algorithm development; use of actual material data for algorithm validation; incorporation in commercial engineering software as a test harness. Approach: a practical engineering scheme using a macroscopic material model based on readily available materials data. Scope: numerical model of hard magnetic and soft ferromagnetic materials; scalar and vector hysteresis, major and minor loops.FindingsThe limited practicality of much of the literature, especially vector hysteresis; successful use of the model in an existing non‐linear numerical solver; energy conservation gives confidence in the results; the electric motor provides a good validation test case.Research limitations/implicationsPossible future research: application to more complicated material properties such as magneto‐relaxation.Practical implicationsThe paper extends the scope of computer‐aided engineering design of electrical machines. The impact on the developer: increased sale of an engineering software product. The impact on the design engineer: more efficient designs, reduced prototyping, reduced technical risk.Originality/valueThe algorithm that provides an effective material model; the focus on the practical issues of data and computational resources; the implementation of a theoretical construct in a large‐scale engineering design program. The value is to designers of electrical machines.

A Study of the Relation between Learning Outcomes and Learning Transfer in Engineering Design Programs

A Study of the Relation between Learning Outcomes and Learning Transfer in Engineering Design Programs

JMD Editorial Board

JMD Editorial Board

Teams that Work: Campus Culture, Engineer Identity, and Social Interactions

Not all student teams are created equal. Some manage to produce excellent engineering results, others fabricate it. Social interactions in some teams are respectful, while on other teams some members expect others to carry the load, but take credit for it later. With engineering teamwork becoming more prevalent on engineering campuses, knowing more about student design teams that work is especially important. This article uses two teamwork cases from a large-scale ethnographic study of an engineering design program to describe not only the ways that student engineers practiced design teamwork, but also how campus culture reached into social interactions between teammates via engineering identities produced on campus. A model for effective teamwork emerged that implies producing high quality engineering products, and doing so through respectful social interactions. Implications for teaching about teamwork, teaching with teams, and thinking about ways to change campus cultures to better promote design engineering are developed.

Editorial

About a year ago the Engineering Design Program of the National Science Foundation sponsored a Workshop on Engineering Design in Year 2030. It brought together about 50 academic researchers and representatives from industry into four focus groups that considered the theoretical foundations, computing and information technology, social aspects, and innovation in engineering design. The participants reflected on research over the past 25 years and projected needs in the year 2030 to identify today’s research priorities in engineering design. The report recommends: (i) a commitment to research into the science of engineering innovation, (ii) a commitment to research into the socio-technical aspects of engineering design, and (iii) a high priority for research to develop computing and information and infrastructure. Of interest to me was a note that some of these ideas are to be found in a recent National Academy of Engineering (NAE) report, THE ENGINEER OF 2020: VISIONS OF ENGINEERING IN THE NEW CENTURY. The NAE reports on its study of engineering education imagining technology needs in the year 2020. Counting backward from this future, an engineer who is to be 34 in 2020 has just entered college this past Fall 2004. With four years of college and 12 years of experience, today’s freshmen will be excellent prospects for, if not already part of, engineering management. Like our colleagues in the NSF Workshop, the NAE report considers the socio-technical aspects of engineering to be experienced by engineering managers of the future, and describes the characteristics of success: “Effective and wise management of technological resources is integral to engineering work. The choices will be gray in nature, balancing (for example) economic, social, environmental, and military factors. Leaders, and those who influence these choices, will benefit from a sense of purpose and clarity. Successful engineers in 2020 will, as they always have, recognize the broader contexts that are intertwined in technology and its application in society. (pg. 56).” Provoked to thinking as the NAE intends, I wonder how do I as an engineering educator ensure that our young student gains the “sense of purpose and clarity” necessary to guide choices that affect an employer or client relative to the broader contexts of technology and society? This is not a new question to me. It arises in discussions of Canon 1 of ASME’s, Code of Ethics, which states: “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties.” I interpret this to our young engineers as a requirement that they mitigate all risks of damage and injury that exceed acceptable levels, which, of course, leads to a discussion of the choice of acceptable risk levels. It is here that the NAE document seems to advise our young colleague to be among those who “influence these choices” in response to an understanding of the “broader contexts.” The report ends by saying our Engineer 2020 will aspire to “the ingenuity of Lillian Gilbreth, the problem-solving capabilities of Gordon Moore, the scientific insight of Albert Einstein, the creativity of Pablo Picasso, the determination of the Wright brothers, the leadership abilities of Bill Gates, the conscience of Eleanor Roosevelt, [and] the vision of Martin Luther King.” The energy of the NAE vision and even that of our colleagues at the NSF Workshop on Engineering Design demands an active social role for the engineer of the future. Which brings us back to the question of how does today’s engineering education and research provide the foundation necessary to address technological and social challenges of 2020 and 2030. This is not a new question, but it remains an important one. I look forward to more from the National Academy of Engineering and the National Science Foundation on this subject. J. Michael McCarthy Irvine, CA

Global Engineering Education at Penn State

Recent efforts in global engineering in the College of Engineering at Penn State were begun in the early 1990s, but there were earlier programs. It is now on the radar screen in the Dean's office and almost all engineering departments. This informal report is mostly focused on the activities in the Engineering Design Program where many of the initiatives have been based.

3412 群大機械システム工学科での創成型科目の実施例(ブロックの集合からなるロボット機構の構造力学)

3412 群大機械システム工学科での創成型科目の実施例(ブロックの集合からなるロボット機構の構造力学)

Strategies for Collective Minimalist Mobile Robots. Engineering Research Series No. 6

9R18. Strategies for Collective Minimalist Mobile Robots. Engineering Research Series No 6. - C Melhuish (Fac of Eng, Univ of the West of England, UK). Professional Eng Publ, Suffolk, UK. 2001. 222 pp. ISBN 1-86058-318-0. $150.00.Reviewed by JE Cochran (Dept of Aerospace Eng, Auburn Univ, 211 Aerospace Eng Bldg, Auburn AL 36849-5338).A swarm of bees has a collective intelligence different from, and in many ways, superior to that of each of its members. Working together, wasps construct nests that a single wasp probably cannot even envision. Individual ants forage for food, but the ant colony brings in the harvest, using several modes of communication. Can the techniques and principles used by these insects help scientists and engineers design simple, or minimalist robots that are less prone to disabling malfunctions because they are so simple. Can such robots in large swarms collectively accomplish complex tasks even if a large number of the individual members of the swarm are disabled during the process? In short, “[Is it] possible to construct a collection of simple mobile robots that can reproducibly perform tasks that transcend the capability of the individual?” Addressing this question is the purpose of the author of this monograph, which is Volume 6 in the publisher ’s Engineering Research Series. Several other volumes in this series focus on the use of characteristics of animals, especially insects, to design robots. The underlying idea seems to be that through the process of evolution, nature has provided solutions that are collectively minimal (optimal for large numbers of actors) and that these solutions “[potentially] can provide the advantages of robustness, redundancy, scalability, emergent self-organization…” According to Webster, minimalist means “one who favors restricting…the achievement of a set of goals to a minimum.” Minimalistic action, decentralized control, self-organization, redundancy, emergence, and stigmergy (indirect communication) are characteristics that the author proposes for developing robots. In Chapter 2, he describes how these characteristics provide explanations for the application of these characteristics as principles. Minimalistic robots necessarily have minimal computational, communication, and sensory capabilities (Ch 3). Simulation plays a large role in the development of algorithms and experiments are used to test the abilities of actual minimalistic robots to operate under non-ideal environmental conditions. The robots in a swarm are tasked to home on a beacon. A gradient type algorithm based on the sensed proximity of the beacon is used for control. In Chapter 4, some of the robots are secondary signal generators. As a robot so endowed gets closer to the beacon, the signal it emits grows stronger. A number of robots very close to the beacon collectively make an effectively larger beacon. Homing on the beacon is improved, but the robots are less minimal. Another assault on the minimality is made in Chapter 5 by adding to the communication abilities of the robots. However, the additional capability is relatively simple and allows the robots to form work gangs. Indirect communication is introduced in Chapter 6, and in Chapters 6–8, real robots are used to carry out experiments. The ideas of blind bulldozing with minimalistic sorting and segregation are extended in Chapter 8. Conclusions are drawn in Chapter 9. The author’s study does demonstrate “that it is possible to implement collective minimalist strategies, based on biological principles, on simulated and real robots.” His minimalist locomotion strategies and ideas of secondary swarming, control of work gangs, and stigmergic mechanisms should be of interest to investigators in the robotics field. Libraries at universities and colleges with engineering and/or industrial design programs should consider purchasing the collection of monographs in the Engineering Research Series. Individuals working in the robotics area, especially those using biological models to develop algorithms, should also be interested in Strategies for Collective Minimalist Mobile Robots.