Engineering Design in the
21st Century
The end of mathematics?
The end of the pencil?
JWH Price,
Mechanical Engineering Department
1
Comment on current
courses
One of the comments by employers is that
graduates are not employment ready –
significant additional training is required.
Wouldn't it be nice to think our graduates
were so advanced that they could bring new
ideas to the employers.
Engineering design is one area where our
graduates could run ahead, but …
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
2
Current text books
The two dominant text books in Mechanical
Engineering are
RC Juvinall and KM Marshek, Fundamentals of
machine component design, John Wiley, New
York, 3rd edition, 2003 and
JE Shigley, CR Mischke, RG Budynas,
Mechanical engineering design, 7th ed., McGrawHill, New York, 2004
These may be the only texts that students
buy on this subject during their degree
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
3
The nature of these
books
Basically the books comprise:
First half: Design against failure
Materials, stresses, deflections, various
failure criteria.
Second half: Mechanical elements
Joining methods, springs, gears etc.
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
4
How do they compare to
professional practice?
The books are very introductory
The methods are 50 years old
They are basically metallic and heavy
industry in orientation
No significant discussion of computation
methods
No introduction to Standards
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
5
21st Century Industrial
practice
Large interdisciplinary teams
Digital collaboration tools
Design conducted in virtual space
Uses ready-made designs or suppliers
designs. Prior art is normally available.
Large scale analysis tools involved
Major verification activities required
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
6
Dominance of nontraditional drivers
Financial drivers
Style and Market drivers
Manufacturing supply chain and
assembly visualisation
Project visualisation
Prudential and legal conformance
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
7
How can our degrees
respond?
In Levels 3 and 4 try to create more
realistic design environments
Take the emphasis off fundamentals
and move to rapid design approaches
Develop multidisciplinary design
subjects
Integrate Analysis and Collaboration
tools into the subject.
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
8
Verification as a key
issue
Anecdotal evidence an author’s experience indicates
that the reliability of engineer’s mathematics has not
improved by using complex analysis tools.
There is a risk associated with producing beautiful
pictures – they look good but may be wrong.
Thus
There is still a need to understand the fundamentals
Engagement with the physical world is becoming a major
issue.
These things must be part of a design based degree
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
9
How much do we need
to teach the basics?
Do graduates need to know the
mathematics behind the programs?
Do they need to be able to operate with
a pencil?
Or should we rush over these to get to
the employer’s gold – graduates who
produce value from day 1.
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
10
What are the answers?
With the pencil: perhaps we get rid of it.
Drawings are becoming a thing of the
past; for little workshops.
With the mathematics: Perhaps for
some streams of students the courses
can be changed. The time can be
better used in going for real design
simulation and verification approaches.
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
11
Design in the degree.
Design and in particular digital design techniques, are
a major interest of students.
The students run ahead of the lecturers in these
subjects, they even know more than the lecturers.
(This is virtually unknown in other subjects).
Very important to tie back to the physical world – real
failure, real manufacturing – but resources for this are
expensive.
Need to emphasize verification and not focus on the
pictures and bright reports.
Probably the best preparation for employment.
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
12
Taking these ideas
seriously
Create an elective degree: at least one
year of the degree would be spent on
design
Making and testing prototypes would be
required
Very free access to collaboration, 3D
modeling, manufacturing and analysis
software would be essential
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
13
Unfortunately,
Assessment
Multidisciplinary groups working with
companies are a very nice way to go
If we use such groups there are issues of
assessment
Individual assessment by exam produces
the issue of how design can be done
without free access to information.
John Price,
Mechanical Engineering
14