Browsing by Subject "Engineering design"

Now showing 1 - 15 of 15

A long-term study of educational robotics and achievement in math and science
(2018-06-21) Ko, Pat; Marshall, Jill Ann; Martin, Taylor; Petrosino, Anthony J; Riegle-Crumb, Catherine; Crawford, Richard H
In recent years, educational robotics has become a popular tool in STEM programs, such as afterschool clubs, and summer camps, as well as classrooms. However, the research on the benefits of robotics have shown mixed results. In addition, many of the studies lack strong controls and focus on short-term effects, while the programs they investigate have few contact hours and do not have a consistent curriculum. This situation indicates that more research is needed. This work focuses on a public high school in Texas with a year-long robotics class. The first part examines a set of students who enrolled in the robotics class in the 9th or 10th grade, and a comparison group of students who did not enroll in robotics. The robotics and comparison groups were matched on 8th grade standardized math test scores, and demographic factors. Using multiple linear regression and logistic regression, I found that robotics enrollment was not a significant predictor for 11th grade math standardized test scores, or high school enrollment in Physics 1, Physics 2, or Calculus classes. The second part examines a series of video recordings of student teams in the robotics class working on a capstone project. Using grounded theory, I coded and analyzed recordings of two of the teams, focusing on the math and science discussions between the students and the contexts in which the math and science occur. Three themes emerged from the data. First, students use math/science more frequently to identify and fix problems than in their initial design. Second, students use math/science at a conceptual level and do not perform math calculations. Last, students have a “good enough” attitude and do not prioritize precision. These results may help explain the lack of effect robotics have on math test scores.
Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps : a directed design-by-analogy technique
(2021-12-09) Marshall, Kervin Scott, II; Crawford, Richard H.; Borrego, Maura; Markman, Art; Seepersad, Carolyn
Engineering design researchers have sought to harness the power of analogy in the design process through the development of directed design-by-analogy techniques. The majority of these techniques focus on identifying potential analogies as opposed to the application of the analogies to a design problem. The Analogy Seeded Mind-Map tool was created to provide designers a way to utilize the identified analogies to solve their design problem. The utility of the method was demonstrated across design activities utilizing both prescribed design problems and more traditional, open-ended design problems. Designers utilizing the method were able to come up with numerous potential solutions to their design problem through the analogical relationship between key functional verbs and related verbal analogies. A series of experiments was performed to determine if it was possible to identify relational or independent properties of the verbal analogies that have a statistically significant effect on evaluation metrics of the concepts generated. The first experiment evaluated the effect of analogical distance as measured by the path length between two verbs in the structure of an online verbal synonym database. The study showed an inconclusive effect of this measure of analogical distance on the evaluation metrics. The second experiment evaluated the effect of word familiarity and the number of definitions of a word on the quantity of concepts generated. Familiarity was assessed utilizing a survey administered prior to the concept generation exercise and the number of definitions was determined by referencing a standard dictionary. The study showed an inconclusive effect of familiarity and number of definitions on the evaluation metrics. The third experiment evaluated the alternative representation of analogies as pictures on the evaluation metrics. Pictorial representation of analogies resulted in a statistically significant increase in the novelty of concepts generated. The fourth and final experiment compared the performance of verbally related and unrelated words on the quantity, quality, and novelty of concepts generated. There was not a statistically significant difference observed for the quantity, quality, or novelty of the concepts generated using related and unrelated verbs. However, related verbs demonstrated an increased efficiency (quality ideas vs total ideas) compared to unrelated words.
The analysis and development of a mechanical breadboard structure
(2006-12) Mikes, James Andrew; Wood, Kristin L.
This thesis introduces the mechanical breadboard as a learning development tool and details the creation of one concept. It begins with a review of the state of the art for mechanical breadboards to include commercial and academic developments and products. It defines what a mechanical breadboard is for this research, what the customer needs are, and what critical functions the breadboard should be able to prototype. Following this analysis, a development team created a new novel structural system for a mechanical breadboard as the research indicated these components were both important to the overall system and had a great opportunity for innovation and improvement. The solution developed is based on node and frame member structural system that allows multiple degrees of freedom in the structural layout. The node is the key component of the structural system and utilizes a three section design to give multiple degrees of freedom and attachment points.
Computational automation for efficient design of acoustic metamaterials
(2022-01-26) Wiest, Tyler James; Seepersad, Carolyn; Haberman, Michael R. (Michael Richard), 1977-; Crawford, Richard; Lee, Kevin
Acoustic metamaterials (AMMs) are an exciting technology because they are capable of responding to vibrations in ways that are impossible to achieve with conventional materials. However, realization of AMMs requires engineering design to provide a connection between first-principles research and production of parts that perform as expected. Designing AMMs is a challenging endeavor because evaluating designs is costly and manufacturing metamaterials requires precise techniques with small minimum resolutions. To address these challenges, new computational tools are necessary to aid design. This work proposes three tasks that improve the capabilities of design for AMM while being extensible to other engineering design automation tasks. The first task is to develop a design exploration tool that improves the computational efficiency of identifying sets of high-performing designs in a design space that is sparse and comprises mixed discrete/continuous data. The second task is to develop a process for designers to evaluate manufacturability of difficult-to-manufacture parts and drive co-development of manufacturing methods and AMM. In the final task, a machine learning based method is developed to efficiently model AMM with heterogeneous arrangements of their microstructures such that strict homogenization is infeasible. The outcomes from completing these tasks will provide a significant and novel improvement over existing methods of designing AMMs.
Design synthesis of multistable equilibrium systems
(2004) King, Carey Wayne; Beaman, Joseph J.; Campbell, Matthew I.
Mechanical systems are often desired to have features that can adapt to changing environments. Ideally these systems have a minimum number of parts and consume as little power as possible. Unfortunately many adaptable systems either have a large number of heavy parts and/or continuous actuation of smart materials to provide the adaptive capabilities. For systems where both adaptability and power conservation are desired characteristics, adaptability can be limited by power consumption. Multistable equilibrium (MSE) systems aim to provide a type of adaptable system that can have multiple mechanical configurations, or states, that require no power to maintain each stable configuration. Power is only needed to move among the stable states, and a level of adaptability is maintained. The stable equilibrium configurations are defined by a system potential energy being at a minimum. The design of a MSE system is based around locally shaping a potential energy curve about desired equilibrium configurations, both stable and unstable, such that the basic design goals of position, linearized natural frequency, and transition energy can be specified for the MSE system. By mapping the performance space from the design space in tandem with stochastic numerical optimization methods, the designer determines if a certain system topology can be designed as a MSE system. Qualitative and quantitative mapping procedures enable the designer to decide whether or not the desired design lies near the center or periphery of a performance space. The performance space is defined by the desired design criteria (i.e. locations of the equilibria, natural frequency at the equilibria, etc.) that the designer deems important. If the desired design lies near the periphery of the performance space, a series of optimization trials is performed. This series shows the tendency of the problem to be solved as the desired MSE system characteristics are varied within the performance space from a location where the solution is known to exist to the true desired location where the solution is not guaranteed to exist. Upon analysis of the resulting optimization trends, the designer is able to determine whether or not a feasible limit in the system performance has been reached.
Development of a design methodology and application to advance the field of highly mobile robotics
(2011-05) Pace, Patrick Wayne; Wood, Kristin L.; Wood, John J.
Developing innovative ideas as part of engineering design can be limited by the field of technology and the engineer's or design team's understanding of the field. Without sufficient understanding of an emerging technical field, ideation may be hampered by reinventing the proverbial wheel or by a lack of knowledge of the underlying physical principles and state of technology. The research presented here seeks to develop a tool and methodology intended to strengthen a designer’s or design team’s understanding of a field and relevant technologies in order to foster creative and innovative solutions. The presented inductive methodology consists of conducting a thorough review of existing relevant developing or commercially available technologies in order to obtain characteristic property data to be used as a basis of understanding. Analysis of the plotted data may lead to understanding existing trends, identifying voids where opportunities exist to expand the design space and general insights into the field. The effectiveness of using empirical data to look for innovation is investigated in the domain of highly mobile robots. Senior cadets from USAFA and UT Austin perform concept generation sessions before and after utilizing the proposed methodology to validate the effectiveness of the approach. The study at UT Austin validates the proposed methodology by measuring the quantity, quality, and novelty of the concepts generated before and after exposure to the methodology. These experiments demonstrate that state-of-technology design tools provide an effective foundation and platform for designers to generate a larger quantity of concepts. To further investigate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, it is used to develop a device within the field of highly mobile robotics. There exist applications of highly mobile robots which require innovative solutions with regard to overcoming obstacles, payload capacity, energy storage and minimizing power requirements. The methodology allows for the development of innovative concepts, and the embodiment and manufacture of a particular solution. The mechanical design solutions to multiple design challenges are presented, and the prototyped device proves capable of expanding the existing design space in terms of its performance with respect to the metrics mentioned above.
Development of product flexibility principles for engineering design
(2005-05-21) Kuchinsky, Benjamin; Wood, Kristin L.
Product flexibility is the degree of responsiveness (or adaptability) of a product to the changing needs of customers. One of the areas within the field of product flexibility, which the research performed for this thesis focuses on, is design for future product evolutions. The basic idea of design for future product evolutions is that increasing the flexibility of a product will reduce the time required to redesign the product at a later date. An empirical study was performed to derive principles of flexibility found in products over time. The patent repository was used as the source of product information. Two methodologies are presented as part of the work: one to find patents of products that display flexibility, and another to analyze those patents to obtain information on the flexibility of the product. From the results of the analysis, a set of fundamental product flexibility principles is presented. The principles are written in a common form and placed into categories. Flexibility principles from previous research are included in the common form and combined with the newly derived principles to obtain a comprehensive list of fundamental product flexibility principles. Finally, a new evolution of a product is developed by applying some of the flexibility principles described in this thesis
The effects of empathic experience design techniques on product design innovation
(2010-05) Saunders, Matthew Nelson; Seepersad, Carolyn; Wood, Kristin L.
The effects of empathic experience design (EED) on the product design process are investigated through a series of product redesign experimental studies. As defined, empathic experience design is the simulation of the experiences of a lead user, or someone who uses a product in an extreme condition. To better understand product innovation, the link between creativity in engineering design and commercial market success is explored through literature and a study of award-winning products is performed to analyze the current trends in innovation. The findings suggest that products are becoming increasingly more innovative in the ways in which they interact with users and their surroundings and that a gap exists between the current tools available for engineers to innovate and the types of innovations present in award-winning products. The application of EED to a concept generation study shows that empathic experiences while interacting with a prototype results in more innovative concepts over typical interactions. The experimental group also saw an increase in user interaction innovations and a decrease in technical feasibility. The application of EED to a customer needs study compares the effect of empathic experiences in an articulated use interview setting. The EED interviews discovered 2.5 times the number of latent customer needs than the control group. A slight decrease in the breadth of topics covered was also seen, but was compensated for when used in conjunction with categorical questioning. Overall the use of empathic experience design is shown to increase the level of innovation throughout the product design process.
Foundations of a reverse engineering methodology
(2011-05) Guillory, Jeremy Barrett; Wood, Kristin L.; Crawford, Richard H.
Reverse engineering is broadly defined as the process of analyzing existing products to learn how to create better products in the future. Including reverse engineering as part of the engineering design process can provide a number of benefits, including a more thorough understanding of existing products, lower cost for the redesign of products, and faster times to market. While reverse engineering can be applied to a wide range of domains, this thesis deals with methodologies for extracting technical data from electro-mechanical products for the purpose of recreating them functionally and dimensionally, to an acceptable level of accuracy. An integrated and evolved reverse engineering methodology is presented. This new methodology is built upon previous work, and results from an effort to integrate all previous methods into the simplest and most useful form. Five novel reverse engineering techniques are introduced to solve problems previously unaddressed in the literature: Bounding Pertinent Geometry, Reassembly by Function, Determining Sample Size, Estimating Production Volume and Accounting for Physical Degradation. Throughout the thesis, a running example of the reverse engineering of the Craftsman Auto Hammer is used to illustrate the application of the evolved methodology.
How differences in interactions affect learning and development of design expertise in the context of biomedical engineering design
(2009-05) Svihla, Vanessa; Petrosino, Anthony J. (Anthony Joseph), 1961-
Authentic design commonly involves teams of designers collaborating on ill-structured problems over extended time periods. Nonetheless, design has been studied extensively in sequestered settings, limiting our understanding of design as process and especially of learning design process. This study addresses potential shortcomings of such studies by examining in-situ student team design. The participants of this study are three cohorts of a year-long capstone biomedical engineering design class at The University of Texas. Pilot research demonstrated advantages of a more authentic redesign task over a kit-based design task; students who chose devices to redesign were significantly better at representing perspective taking associated with customers' needs. Pilot research showed that there was no relationship between Early Efficiency (appropriate use of factual and conceptual knowledge) and Final Innovation of design products. I triangulated various methods for studying design: Qualitative research, Hierarchical Linear Modeling, and Social Network Analysis, the latter of which allowed me to generate team-level statistics of interaction (Cohesion), once I devised a practical method to account for missing data in a weighted network. Final Efficiency is a function of Early Innovation, early and late Cohesion, and team feasibility (factual and practical knowledge). Final Innovation is a function of Early Innovation, late Cohesion, and team Voice of the Customer (perspective-taking), with all relationships in both models positive. Measures of both design skills and interaction are required to explain variance in these outcomes. Narratives of team negotiation of design impasses --seemingly insurmountable barriers-- provide deeper understanding of relationships between design process and products. The case study teams spent a large percentage of their time engaged in problem scoping, but framed as engineering science rather than as engineering design. Only when they began prototyping did they transition towards being solution focused and frame the problem as engineering design. This left little time for iteration of the final design. Variance in timing of iteration may account for slight deviations of the case study teams from the statistical model. Recommendations include earlier opportunities to design and support for team collaboration. Social network analysis is recommended when learning is interactional and to support triangulation.
HyPerModels: hyperdimensional performance models for engineering design
(2005) Turner, Cameron John; Crawford, Richard H.
Engineering design is an iterative process where the designer determines an appropriate set of design variables and cycle parameters so as to achieve a set of performance index goals. The relationships between design variables, cycle parameters and performance indices define the design space, a hyperdimensional representation of possible designs. To represent the design space, engineers employ metamodels, a technique that builds approximate or surrogate models of other models. Metamodels may be constructed from a wide variety of mathematical basis functions but Hyperdimensional Performance Models (HyPerModels) derived from Non-Uniform Rational Bsplines (NURBs) offer many unique advantages when compared to other metamodeling approaches. NURBs are defined by a set of control points, knot vectors and the NURBs orders, resulting in a highly robust and flexible curve definition that has become the de facto computer graphics standard. The defining components of a NURBs HyPerModel can be used to define adaptive sequential sampling algorithms that allow the designer to efficiently survey the design space for interesting regions. The data collected from design space surveys can be represented with a HyPerModel by adapting NURBs fitting algorithms, originally developed for computer graphics, to address the unique challenges of representing a hyperdimensional design space. With a HyPerModel representation, visualization of the design space or design subspaces such as the Pareto subspace is possible. HyPerModels support design space analysis for adaptive sequential sampling algorithms, to detect robust design space regions or for fault detection by comparing multiple HyPerModels obtained from the same system. Significantly, HyPerModels uniquely allow multi-start optimization algorithms to locate the global metamodel optimum in finite time. Each of these capabilities is demonstrated with demonstration problems including brushless DC motor fault detection and composite material I-beam and gas turbine engine design problems with the HyPerMaps software package. HyPerMaps defines the necessary algorithms to adaptively sample a design space, construct a HyPerModel and to use a HyPerModel for visualization, analysis or optimization. With HyPerMaps, an engineering designer has a window into the hyperdimensional design space, allowing the designer to explore the design space for undiscovered design variable combinations with superior performance capabilities.
Investigating the innovation capabilities of undergraduate engineering students
(2013-08) Williams, Paul T., active 2013; Seepersad, Carolyn
This thesis describes a method for measuring the innovation capabilities of mechanical engineering students and presents the results of a yearlong experiment. A review of relevant literature shows that it is unclear whether the innovation capabilities of engineering students increase or decrease over time. Experiments were conducted at two universities in which students were asked to redesign an everyday electromechanical product in a sketch-based concept generation activity. Student participants were also asked to complete a self-efficacy survey. Nearly one thousand concepts were generated from a combination of freshmen and seniors. The concepts were evaluated for originality, technical feasibility, and innovation characteristics by multiple raters. At both schools, the findings suggest that the senior-level engineering students are more creative than their freshman-level counterparts without sacrificing technical feasibility. Additionally, the seniors rated higher for originality at the end of the semester than they scored prior to taking their senior design class. These results suggest that the mechanical engineering curricula, and especially the senior-level Engineering Design courses, are having a positive effect on student creativity.
Isogeometric analysis-suitable geometry : rebuilding CAD surface geometries via quadrilateral layouts
(2021-05) Shepherd, Kendrick Monroe, 1989-; Hughes, Thomas J. R.; Gu, Xianfeng; Rodin, Gregory J; Demkowicz, Leszek F; Beckner, William
Ironically, neither engineering design nor engineering analysis consumes the majority of the time an engineer spends in the engineering design-through-analysis process. The bottleneck—well over half of the process—involves converting a computer-aided design (CAD) object into an analysis-suitable representation: typically a mesh. This time-consuming, labor-intensive conversion step impedes the engineering workflow, limits design optimization, and costs companies (and thus their clients) handsomely. The isogeometric paradigm seeks to remove this workflow impediment by using the same smooth splines used in engineering design for engineering analysis. Under this perspective, no auxiliary (piecewise-continuous) data structure would be necessary to transform the information given in an engineering model for its subsequent use in analysis. Since their inception over a decade ago, isogeometric analysis techniques have proven to be more accurate per degree of freedom, more geometrically faithful, and more versatile than their traditional analysis counterparts. Despite these accomplishments, the fundamental goal of a streamlined design-through-analysis process has not yet been achieved. Most CAD models are built utilizing Boolean operations; these so-called “trimmed” models are not inherently suitable for use in analysis. As a result, most conforming CAD models used for isogeometric analysis are still built by hand. This is the single most limiting factor keeping isogeometric techniques from being more widely incorporated in the engineering industry. In this dissertation, I develop mathematical theory and an ensuing computational framework to automatically rebuild open CAD models into well-structured, trim-free spline representations. Beyond its automation, the methodology readily allows for user intervention, making it a viable tool for the design-through-analysis process. The techniques are validated by rebuilding the DEVCOM Generic Hull (a trimmed CAD vehicle of interest to the US Army) and portions of a 1996 Dodge Neon into spline representations with no trimming. Portions of each are input to the commercial shell solvers of LS-DYNA to show their capacity for use in engineering analysis. Ultimately, this dissertation provides missing tools necessary to enable the isogeometric framework’s adoption into the engineering workflow and to streamline the engineering design-through-analysis process.
Offshore outsourcing in global design networks
(2007-12) Nayak, Nilesh Vithal; Taylor, John E.
Researchers have examined the benefits of outsourcing engineering design services from various perspectives. However, the process by which complex engineering design work is outsourced across international boundaries has not been sufficiently investigated. In this research, three offshore outsourcing design projects involving a design team in the United States outsourcing part of the project design to an offshore design vendor are studied. The empirical interview data and primary documentation are analyzed to induce a set of eight key constructs associated with outsourcing engineering services across national boundaries. Variances in the perspectives of the client and the vendor are analyzed to identify important differences. The findings highlight the importance of addressing: (1) client concerns over trust development and knowledge sharing, (2) vendor concerns over quality control, communication, and schedule control, and (3) shared concerns over cultural barriers, role redundancy, and design practice norms. Understanding and addressing offshore outsourcing issues in global design networks is critical to enhancing the efficiency and profitability of complex engineering services offshoring. This study concludes with the best practices observed during the study and a set of recommendations, which will be beneficial to the A/E/C industry.
Spatial ability in high school geometry students
(2011-08) Brudigam, Kristin Lea; Crawford, Richard H.; Petrosino, Anthony J.; Marshall, Jill
The purpose of this study was to observe the differences in high school PreAP Geometry students in regards to spatial ability. The hypothesis states that students who are enrolled in both high school PreAP Geometry and Introduction to Engineering Design have better spatial ability skills than those students who are solely enrolled in PreAP Geometry. Of the 207 students enrolled in geometry at the test school, there was a smaller population (n = 57) simultaneously enrolled in an engineering graphics course at the high school. No direct or special intervention was given to either group of students. Near the end of the academic year, all students were administered the Purdue Visualization of Rotations Test (ROT). Results showed that students enrolled in the engineering design class performed better than those students not enrolled in the course. Furthermore, the males outperformed the females when all students were considered. However, there was not a significant difference among the males, nor was there a difference between males and females enrolled in engineering. Further research is needed to understand these differences and how geometry education plays a role in the development of spatial ability skills.