WHICH DESIGN METHODOLOGIES ARE EFFECTIVE TO SUPPORT A CAPSTONE PROJECT IN AEROSPACE DESIGN ENGINEERING?
Abstract – Considering the challenges in the aerospace industry, the NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Chair in Aerospace Design Engineering (NCADE) has launched its own version of a final year undergraduate engineering capstone project at Concordia University. NCADE’s objective is to expose students to the immense complexity of an aircraft design, thereby better meeting the industry needs of newly graduated students. Four design methodologies (i.e., systems engineering – SE, quality function deployment – QFD, theory of inventive problem solving – TRIZ, and environment-based design – EBD) were evaluated in the context of the NCADE project to answer the research question such as "to what extent do these methodologies provide effective support across the activities in the capstone project?" The evaluation was subjective discussing whether the design methodologies support the activities in the project. From the evaluation, it can be concluded that the studied design methodologies perform poorly to support the activities in the capstone project. Therefore, future research should investigate a better support for the capstone project to achieve NCADE’s goals.