scholarly journals DESIGN PROBLEM PERCEPTION IN ENGINEERING DESIGN TEAMS

Author(s):  
Amirali Ommi ◽  
Yong Zeng ◽  
Catharine C. Marsden

 Abstract – Engineering design is a decision making process that needs a good perception of the design problem to be solved. Design problems are usually solved in a team. Teams need the existence of a good design problem perception to create design solutions. This study provides an approach for elaborating a descriptive model to describe how the perception process works within a design team. This study is going to propose an approach for integrating a theoretical model of design creativity with team mental models, so they can be used for elaborating the descriptive model of perception in design teams. The NSERC Chair in Aerospace Design Engineering (NCADE) at Concordia University holds a capstone project which will be considered to be used as a test bed for validating proposed model through experimental analysis. Proposed experiments and further research are introduced at the end of paper.

Author(s):  
D. S. Petkau ◽  
D. D. Mann

Student design projects in engineering courses are usually short term conceptual design problems. Upon completion of the projects it is difficult to assess which design activities had the greatest contribution to the success of the design. In the fall of 2006, students in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year Design Trilogy courses at the University of Manitoba were asked to keep extensive design journals. Design teams consisted of multiyear students completing various industry projects. Student design activities recorded in the journals were coded. Data were compared between design teams and between students in the different years of study. This paper describes the evaluation process and reports on the preliminary findings.


Author(s):  
Christina Iliopoulou ◽  
Ioannis Tassopoulos ◽  
Konstantinos Kepaptsoglou ◽  
Grigorios Beligiannis

Electric buses have long been recognized as a promising direction for offering sustainable public transportation services. While range and battery performance constraints have hindered the widespread adoption of electric buses in the past, technological advances make them a prominent and attractive option for public transportation in the future. Still, operational constraints and the need for additional (charging) infrastructure highlight the need for introducing appropriate decision-making tools, tailor-made for supporting the design of transit networks operated by electric buses. This paper focuses on developing and testing a comprehensive route design model for the case of a transit network, operated exclusively by an electric bus fleet (Electric Transit Route Network Design Problem—E-TRNDP). The model is formulated as a bi-level optimization problem, which attempts to jointly design efficient transit routes and locate required charging infrastructure. A multi-objective, particle swarm optimization algorithm, coupled with a mixed linear—integer programming model is used to solve the model. An existing benchmark network is used as a test-bed for the proposed model and solution process; results illustrate that the proposed model and solution method yield realistic design outcomes in an acceptable time frame.


Author(s):  
Madhur Agarwal

In real world, the structural engineering design problems are large scale non-linear constrained problems. In the present study, crow search algorithm (CSA) is applied to find the optimal solution of structural engineering design problems such as pressure vessel design problem, welded beam design problem and tension/ compression string design problem. The numerical results are compared with the existing results reported in the literature including metaheuristic algorithms and it is found that the results obtained by the crow search algorithm are better than other existing algorithms. Further, the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified to be better than the existing algorithms by statistical analysis using mean, median, best case, and worst case scenarios. The present study confirms that the crow search algorithm may be easily and effectively applied to various structural design problems.


Author(s):  
Kikuo Fujita ◽  
Noriyasu Hirokawa ◽  
Shinsuke Akagi ◽  
Shinji Kitamura ◽  
Hideaki Yokohata

Abstract A genetic algorithm based optimization method is proposed for a multi-objective design problem of an automotive engine, that includes several difficulties in practical engineering optimization problems. While various optimization techniques have been applied to engineering design problems, a class of realistic engineering design problems face on a mixture of different optimization difficulties, such as the rugged nature of system response, the numbers of design variables and objectives, etc. In order to overcome such a situation, this paper proposes a genetic algorithm based multi-objective optimization method, that introduces Pareto-optimality based fitness function, similarity based selection and direct real number crossover. This optimization method is also applied to the design problem of an automotive engine with the design criteria on a total power train. The computational examples show the ability of the proposed method for finding a relevant set of Pareto optima.


Author(s):  
Christopher McComb ◽  
Jonathan Cagan ◽  
Kenneth Kotovsky

A team with the right characteristics can exceed the sum of their individual efforts. However, a team having the wrong characteristics may perform more poorly than the sum of its individuals. Therefore, it is crucial that teams are assembled and managed properly in order to maximize performance. This work examines how the properties of a design problem can be used to select the best values for team characteristics. Two characteristics are considered: team size and interaction frequency. A computational model of design teams that has been shown to effectively emulate human team behavior is leveraged to pinpoint optimized team characteristics for solving a variety of fluid and structural design problems. The nature of each design problem is characterized with respect to local and global behavior of the design space, alignment between objective functions, and the resources allotted for solving the problem. Regression analysis is used to create equations for predicting optimized team characteristics based on problem properties. These equations, which enable the informed design of design teams based on those characteristics, describe statistically significant relationships and are found to have useful levels of accuracy. Further analysis reveals insights about how the properties of a design problem can influence a team’s search for solutions.


Author(s):  
Mahmoud Dinar ◽  
Jami J. Shah

Problem formulation is an essential design skill for which assessment methods have been less commonly developed. In order to evaluate the progress of a group of graduate students in mechanical engineering design in regard with the problem formulation skill, they were asked to work on three design problems using the Problem Formulator web tool during their course work. Changes in a set of measures elicited from this data were examined in addition to sketches, simulations, and working prototypes. Inventories of requirements and issues, as well as concepts derived from morphological charts were created to assess designers’ skills and outcomes.


Author(s):  
Antony J Hodgson ◽  
HF Machiel Van Der Loos

While most engineering schools substantially agree on the general form of the design process that should be used to address engineering design problems, surprisingly little is known about the actual practical effectiveness of many recommended techniques. In this paper and presentation, we review some of the recent evidence concerning the effectiveness of several well- known practices related to ideation - i.e., generating alternative potential solutions to a design problem.


Author(s):  
L. Siddharth ◽  
Amaresh Chakrabarti ◽  
Srinivasan Venkataraman

Analogical design has been a long-standing approach to solve engineering design problems. However, it is still unclear as to how analogues should be presented to engineering design in order to maximize the utility of these. The utility is minimal when analogues are complex and belong to other domain (e.g., biology). Prior work includes the use of a function model called SAPPhIRE to represent over 800 biological and engineered systems. SAPPhIRE stands for the entities: States, Actions, Parts, Phenomena, Inputs, oRgans, and Effects that together represent the functionality of a system at various levels of abstraction. In this paper, we combine instances of SAPPhIRE model for representing complex systems (also from the biological domain). We use an electric buzzer to illustrate and compare the efficacy of this model in explaining complex systems with that of a well-known model from literature. The use of multiple-instance SAPPhIRE model instances seems to provide a more comprehensive explanation of a complex system, which includes elements of description that are not present in other models, providing an indication as to which elements might have been missing from a given description. The proposed model is implemented in a web-based tool called Idea-Inspire 4.0, a brief introduction of which is also provided.


Author(s):  
Naomi C. Chesler ◽  
Elizabeth Bagley ◽  
Eric Breckenfeld ◽  
Devin West ◽  
David Williamson Shaffer

Engineering institutions nationwide are pursuing first-year engineering design courses to attract and retain nontraditional students. However, these courses often have high enrollment rates and can be resource intensive. Virtual design projects offer a potential solution to the physical resources requirements but often result in an overly constrained design space, creating uninteresting or non-challenging design problems. We are developing a design problem within a novel virtual environment (i.e., a game) that provides first-year engineering undergraduates with a more authentic engineering design experience and a more complete and accurate understanding of the engineering profession. The design problem presented challenges students to incorporate carbon nanotubes and chemical surfactants into a hemodialysis ultrafiltration unit. Our approach seeks to provide students with experience in the skills, knowledge, values, identity, and epistemology of the engineering profession, which is the epistemic frame of the profession. The virtual environment also provides a uniquely comprehensive platform for assessing the students’ epistemic frame development over time. We anticipate that this approach will be highly engaging to first-year undergraduate engineering students and will help engineering instructors understand how engineers-in-training learn to become engineers.


Author(s):  
Lata Nautiyal ◽  
Preeti Shivach ◽  
Mangey Ram

With the advancement in contemporary computational and modeling skills, engineering design completely depends upon on variety of computer modeling and simulation tools to hasten the design cycles and decrease the overall budget. The most difficult design problem will include various design parameters along with the tables. Finding out the design space and ultimate solutions to those problems are still biggest challenges for the area of complex systems. This chapter is all about suggesting the use of Genetic Algorithms to enhance maximum engineering design problems. The chapter recommended that Genetic Algorithms are highly useful to increase the High-Performance Areas for Engineering Design. This chapter is established to use Genetic Algorithms to large number of design areas and delivered a comprehensive conversation on the use, scope and its applications in mechanical engineering.


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