Learning Outcomes

Having studied this unit you should be able to:

• recognise that functional artefacts have had input from a designer, with greater and lesser degrees of engineering input.
• identify that engineering designers work within constraints of finance, materials properties, desired functionality, human factors, etc.;
• understand that design exploits models of the product being designed, whether those models are physical mock-ups, computer-based models, or mathematical models which explore an element of the product’s performance;
• understand that there is rarely a unique solution to any design problem. Part of the skill of a designer is in finding a problem–solution pair, and the best compromise;
• understand how models of the design process are formulated, and how they can be applied to understand the development of a particular product or product family;
• understand that models of the design process, while useful, cannot guarantee good design or provide a template by which all designs can be judged;
• understand that early choices about design can have large influences on the available final solutions.
• appreciate the steps required to move from a conceptual design to a functional product within a process of innovation;
• critically evaluate the success of a designed product, and suggest concepts for improvement where necessary;
• understand design-related terminology such as innovation, context, uncertainty and style;
• understand the concept of stiffness, and that the stiffness of a component can be altered by changing its dimensions or changing the material from which it is made;
• understand the concept of stress, and how it can be calculated simply from the force and the cross-sectional area;
• understand the concept of strain, and how to calculate it;
• understand the concept of Young’s modulus and how to calculate it. Be able to distinguish between Young’s modulus as a material’s property and stiffness as a component property;
• understand the principle of a merit index for comparing different materials, and be able to perform simple calculations of merit indices.