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The process of opportunity recognition is pivotal to engineering design, fostering technological innovation and entrepreneurship. Although there are multiple studies conducted in the area of opportunity recognition studying the behaviors of entrepreneurs, examining engineering students' approaches have been underexplored. There is a lack of research in regards to opportunity recognition processes among engineering students, particularly in the context of design education. The presented study addresses this gap by qualitatively examining approaches to opportunity recognition among mechanical engineering students enrolled in an engineering design course. Using a sample of 23 mechanical engineering students, the approaches to opportunity recognition were analyzed using students' responses to open-ended survey questions and student group discussions. From the analysis of the qualitative data, four key themes emerged regarding the improvement of the device and process, user consideration, environmental sustainability, and information and resources accessed by students. The findings provide a deeper understanding that can be used to inform educational practices and further research in the area of opportunity recognition in engineering education settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes goals, process, and results in the effort to introduce new curricula at The Faculty of Technical Sciences of University Mother Theresa - Skopje fully devoted to teach students in the direction of sustainable development. The idea was born in the process of reaccreditation of the old curricula named "Mechanical Engineering and management" at The Faculty of Technical Sciences. The authors of this paper, and the idea for reconstruction were fully aware of the direction Mechanical Engineering needs to go to contribute to the sustainable development of the country and wider. Therefore, that idea led the developing process into new curricula titled: "Sustainable Design in Mechanical Engineering". From total of 40 courses, 15-20 are fully related to sustainable development goals and the curricula includes also a number of projects and diploma work by which students will additionally have an opportunity to add to their understanding and knowledge of sustainable development tools. The new curricula successfully passed the process of accreditation and it is now a part of this University offer. Based on this curricula, a number of courses for lifelong learning will be developed. It is expected that this curricula will attract attention both of the new students, but also of the professionals at different companies, state and municipality institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseno y Comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate framework was initiated around 20 years ago at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in order to reform engineering education to cope with the latest needs and challenges available in the industry. MIT researchers thought of the set of skills that graduates would need to have upon graduation. Then they developed the framework and syllabus, and then ran it through pilot programmes to monitor and refine its underlying approaches. The framework takes into account students' 'Technical Knowledge and Reasoning', 'Personal and Professional Skills', 'Interpersonal Skills' and ability to 'Conceive-Design-Implement and Operate' engineering system or processes. It is now well established with over 100 universities applying its concepts to enhance engineering education. The framework defines 12 standards, which are implemented to describe the frameworks structure. This framework has been applied to several modules (or courses) within Taylor's School of Engineering. In particular, the present investigation discusses the application of this framework within the context of a Capstone Project module in the school's Mechanical Engineering Programme. This module is a yearlong, 3rd year module within a 4-year engineering degree programme where students are tasked to design and build a complex engineering system. This paper discusses how the framework is used to enhance students' ability to brainstorm and develop suitable and sustainable engineering design solutions for a specified design challenge. The paper will discuss what the students have accomplished in each part of the conceive-design-implement-operate framework stages, as well as how these techniques have enabled them to appropriately design an engineering solution in addition to the rubrics used to assess them in each part of the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although morphological charts are widely taught used tools in engineering design, little formal guidance is provided regarding their representation and exploration. Thus, an experiment was conducted to elucidate the influence of functional ordering on the exploration of morphological charts. Two design prompts were used, each with five different functional arrangements: (1) most-to-least important function, (2) least-to-most important function, (3) input-to-output function, (4) output-to-input function, and (5) Random. Sixty-seven junior mechanical engineering students were asked to generate integrated design concepts from prepopulated morphological charts for each design prompt. The concepts were analyzed to determine the frequency with which a given means was selected, how much of the chart was explored, the sequence of exploration, and the influence of function ordering. Results indicated a tendency to focus upon the initial columns of the chart irrespective of functional order. The most-to-least-important functional order resulted in higher chances and a uniformity of design space exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant gap exists between engineering students' perceptions of prototypes and prototyping abilities and professionals' perceptions and abilities. Structured prototyping frameworks have recently been developed and proposed as a means to help students close this gap, but the effects of these frameworks on students' behavior have not been assessed. The purpose of this work is to investigate if and how a structured prototyping framework affects the self-reported prototyping behaviors of engineering students. Understanding how structured prototyping frameworks affect students can provide educators with a deeper understanding of the way their students adopt and understand design methods. A mixed method study is presented. A 15-item survey and two open-ended questions were distributed to 235 students in a junior-level mechanical engineering design class in order to capture self-reported prototyping behavior. Quantitative results indicate that significant differences in engineering students' prototyping behaviors exist across time and between groups. Results from qualitative analysis indicate that students in the control group focused solely on improving technical quality, while students in both experimental groups focused on a wider range of design qualities. This study is the first to demonstrate that a structured prototyping framework can affect engineering students' self-reported prototyping behaviors during design activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is written in honor of my long term friend and mentor Professor Bernard Roth who spent over six decades in Academic contributions devoted to Kinematics, Dynamics, Control, and design of computer controlled mechanical devices. He is continuing actively in his work from the famous school Hasso Plattner Institute of Design cofounded at Stanford (popularly known as d.school). As an Academic Director he is active in Creativity in Design. This paper explores the idea of Creativity directly from Science of 17th–18th centuries in place of Engineering evolved by Professor Timoshenko at Stanford in early 20th century at the time of rapid expansion of rotating machinery from de Laval in 1882. An example of design that involves extreme temperature ranges, magneto hydrodynamics and optimization in a fusion reactor to produce tritium fuel will be described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering involvement with aesthetics is vital for the creation of innovative and successful products in today’s fast changing world. This paper discusses the nature of thisinvolvement historically and in the present, and goes further to argue that aesthetics plays a central role in the creative process itself. Thus, if engineers are involved in the creation of products, or if they wish tobecome more creative, it is important that they be sensitive to the aesthetic implications oftheir work and also to their personal aesthetic capabilities. This paper will also examine afew of the reasons why the importance of aesthetics may be difficult for the engineering profession to acknowledge primarily based on A survey into textbooks used in educating mechanical engineers and engineering designers with the aim to identify and finally a possible paradigmatic change in the engineers approach to aesthetics is presented and discussed.

Copyright of Revista Ingeniería e Investigación is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ingenieraia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In ME Tools, an introductory undergraduate mechanical engineering course, students work in teams, acquiring design and process development knowledge. Throughout the course, each student assumes one of four possible roles: manager, systems engineer, analyst, or details designer. Team function assignments are based on student response to a short questionnaire. This paper reports on the findings of a longitudinal study that tracked the performance of 204 students as they progressed through the design curriculum up to and including the final year project course. Tracking is achieved using repeated measures ANOVA (RMANOVA). Interactions between the introductory course grades and sub-grades of the major deliverables (report and contest) and those from the other design courses were statistically examined after being divided according to team function. The strengths of these interactions (p values) are reported, with the impact of team functions on performance in the design courses taken by the students often being shown up to three years later in their curriculum. It was also found that 64% of all teams formed for the capstone project contained two or more members of the team originally formed in ME Tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The verification and validation of engineering designs are of primary importance as they directly influence production performance and ultimately define product functionality and customer perception. Research in aspects of verification and validation is widely spread ranging from tools employed during the digital design phase, to methods deployed for prototype verification and validation. This paper reviews the standard definitions of verification and validation in the context of engineering design and progresses to provide a coherent analysis and classification of these activities from preliminary design, to design in the digital domain and the physical verification and validation of products and processes. The scope of the paper includes aspects of system design and demonstrates how complex products are validated in the context of their lifecycle. Industrial requirements are highlighted and research trends and priorities identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trebuchet, a medieval siege weapon, can play an important role in stimulating and maintaining interest in engineering and the physical sciences. We discuss our experience with use of a specialty trebuchet design project in engineering education and service learning. In particular, mechanical engineering juniors in a machine design and synthesis course designed and manufactured (based on formal specifications) trebuchets for use by children 5-12 years of age in an indoor museum environment. The entire process entailed brainstorming of ideas, concept selection, dynamic analysis, design for assembly (DFA) analysis, along with manufacture and testing. Throughout the process, feedback was solicited from the community partner, a local technology discovery center, or museum ('The Works'). In the end, a total of six children's indoor trebuchets were manufactured and installed in the local technology center. The results presented are reproducible for use by other interested instructors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

System-level design is proposed as the set of activities that aid design engineers in transitioning from highly abstract conceptual ideas to detailed designs. It is characterized by exploration of and decisions about the arrangement of components and subsystems, and design of interfaces. While these activities are sometimes included in engineering design frameworks, it has not been well studied. And yet, the results from three analyses of empirical data derived from mechanical engineering student design projects suggests that such activities seem to have a significant impact on independently assessed outcome measures, even though they comprise a small percentage of student effort. This further suggests that system-level design may be a high average activity worthy of further investigation. This paper defines system-level design, summarizes the research method used and analyses of the empirical data, and presents a tool to aid in the system-level design phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the feasibility of designing high-speed ships with hull-form geometry suitable for planked construction, with the aim of reducing the hull construction cost. An algorithm is developed for placing prismatic planks on to a three-dimensional hull form to represent a planked construction. A number of well-known hull forms are examined using the algorithm developed in order to assess their suitability for this construction technique. It is shown that typical round-bilged forms are unsuitable for planked construction, since an undesirably large proportion of the material strength will be used in forming the structure. A conceptual design for a simplified hull form is developed which contains significantly reduced levels of double curvature, and this design is shown to be suitable for planked construction, as well as offering the potential for advantages in conventional plated construction. It is further shown that the hydrodynamic resistance of this conceptual design is comparable with a more traditional form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A closed-form solution for the design of lead-lag compensators based on an exact model-matching criterion is developed. Using the developed design tool, students are able to obtain lead-lag compensators in a fraction of the time that is required by traditional design methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore various options to classify technological knowledge for mechanical engineering designers. Classification is needed when technological knowledge is presented to designers in an automated knowledge management system (for example, a database that can be accessed by designers through the Internet). In particular, we draw from philosophy of technology, history of technology, and design methodology, to see what classifications can be made. It is not known whether such theoretical classifications are recognised by designers. In the empirical part of our study, we have submitted a number of optional classifications to active mechanical engineering designers to see what classification they would prefer as the basis for an automated knowledge-based system on the Internet. The outcome was that they recognised a classification that had been developed in the context of philosophical and historical studies, and even preferred that compared to more traditional disciplinary classifications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]