Integrating Graduate And Undergraduate Education Through Student Design Competitions

The Georgia Tech graduate program in Aerospace Systems Design was initiated in 1984 with two rotorcraft design courses as part of the Georgia Tech (U.S. Army Research Office sponsored) rotorcraft center of excellence. The American Helicopter Society (AHS)/industry student design competition has been used as a focus for the rotorcraft design courses from the outset. In 1992 a fixed wing aircraft set of graduate design courses, focusing on the integration of design and manufacturing for the High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT), was also introduced through a grant under the NASA USRA Advanced Design Program (ADP). The Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) was also formed in 1992 to support the graduate design research effort in Concurrent Engineering(CE) and Integrated Product/Process Design/Development (IPPD). In 1995 a space launched vehicle set of graduate design courses was also introduced. While the graduate program in aerospace systems design has been quite successful the need to offer highly motivated undergraduate students a chance to enter national competitions and provide a seamless transition with the graduate program was needed. This has been accomplished over the past few years by having highly motivated undergraduates take both the capstone senior design courses, as well as enter national student design competitions and participate as teams, using the CE/IPPD methodology developed in the graduate program. This approach has proven to be highly successful and has provided an excellent recruiting program for the graduate design program as well as provide a smooth transition. It also has been used to help satisfy the ABET 2000 intent of outcome measurement. With the conversion from a quarter system to a semester system in 1999 we plan to provide an even tighter linkage between our graduate and undergraduate design programs. This paper will summarize our efforts. INTRODUCTION Engineering education today is built primarily around engineering science courses with a focus on disciplinary analysis. Product synthesis is usually taught in an undergraduate senior capstone design course. System synthesis (product plus process synthesis) is seldom taught due to the difficulties of integration of design and manufacturing and the coupling of synthesis with economic analysis. Multidisciplinary analysis across engineering science courses is also quite rare. For example, a student is not expected to use thermodynamics and fluid mechanics in a course in mechanics of materials. Problems that are worked in these courses are selected to illustrate and reinforce the principles of the disciplinary analysis courses. If the student constructed the appropriate P ge 354.1 2 model, he/she could usually solve the problem. Most of the input data and properties are given for these courses, and there usually are a correct answer to the problems. However, real-world engineering problems rarely are that neat and circumscribed. The real problem in engineering design that is expected to be solved may not be readily apparent necessitating the need for problem definition as well as problem analysis. The engineering designer needs to draw on many technical disciplines (solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, electromagnetic theory, etc.) for the solution and usually on non-engineering disciplines as well (economics, finance, law, etc.). The input data may be fragmentary at best, and the scope of the project may be so huge that no individual can follow it all. If that is not difficult enough, usually the design must proceed under severe constraints of time and/or money. There may be major societal constraints imposed by environmental or energy regulations. Finally, in the typical design you rarely have a way of knowing the correct answer. Hopefully, your design works, but is it the best, most efficient design that could have been achieved under the conditions? Only time will tell. Thus it can be seen that engineering (design) extends well beyond the boundaries of science.(Ref. 1) Much of engineering today is about “designing a system”. By a system is meant the entire combination of hardware, software, information, and people necessary to accomplish some specified mission. A large system usually is divided into subsystems, which in turn are made up of components. There is no single universally acclaimed sequence of steps that leads to a workable engineering design. The design process is usually viewed as a sequential process consisting of many design operations. Examples of the operations might be 1) exploring the alternative systems that could satisfy the specified need, 2) formulating a mathematical model of the best system concept, 3) specifying specific parts to construct a component of a subsystem, and 4) selecting a material from which to manufacture a part. Each operation requires information, some of it general technical and business information that is expected of the trained professional and some of it very specific information that is needed to produce successful outcome. Acquisition of information is a vital and often very difficult step in the design process, but fortunately it is a step that usually becomes easier with time. Once armed with the necessary information, the design engineer (or design team) carries out the design operation by using the appropriate technical knowledge and computational and/or experimental tools. At this stage it may be necessary to construct a mathematical model and conduct a simulation of the component’s performance on a digital computer. Or it may be necessary to construct a full-size (or scaled) prototype model and test it in a wind tunnel, in flight, or in a hardware-in-the-loop simulation. The final result of the chain of design modules is a new working object or a collection of objects that is a new system. However, many design projects do not have as an objective the creation of new hardware or systems. Instead, the objective may be the development of new information that can be used elsewhere in the organization. It should be realized that few system designs are carried through to completion; they are stopped because it has become clear that the objectives of the project are not technically and/or economically feasible. However, they create new information, which, if stored in retrievable form, has future value.(Ref. 1) Even the most complex system can be broken down into a sequence of design objectives. Each objective requires an evaluation, and it is common for the decisionmaking phase to involve repeated trials or iterations. The need to go back and try again should not be considered a personal failure or weakness. Design is a creative process, and P ge 354.2 3 all new creations of the mind are the result of trial and error. In fact, if it were possible to work a design straight through without iteration, the design would indeed be very routine. The iterative nature of design provides an opportunity to improve the design on the basis of the preceding outcome. That, in turn, leads to the search for the best possible technical outcome. That, in turn, leads to the search for the best possible technical condition, e.g., maximum performance at minimum weight (or cost). Many techniques for optimizing a design have be developed, and although they are intellectual pleasing and technically interesting, they often have limited application in a complex design situation. In the usual situation the actual design parameters chosen by the engineer are a compromise among several alternatives. There may be too many variables to include all of them in the optimization, or non-technical considerations like available time or legal constraints may have to be considered, so that trade-offs must be made. The parameters chosen for the design are then close to but not at optimum values. They are often referred to as optimal values, the best that can be achieved within the total constraints of the system.(Ref. 1) In a 1990 report, Scholarship Reconsidered (Ref.2) , Ernest Boyer, then president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, proposed that universities broaden their view of professional scholarship to include four overlapping areas -the scholarship of discovering knowledge (conducting research), the scholarship of integrating knowledge, the scholarship of applying knowledge, and the scholarship of teaching. He states that American higher education is imaginative and creative enough to support and reward not only those scholars uniquely gifted in research but also those who excel in the integration and application of knowledge, as well as those especially adept in the scholarship of teaching. Such a mosaic of talent, if acknowledged, would bring renewed vitality to higher learning and the nation. The scholarships of integrating knowledge and applying it, along with the scholarship of teaching, are required for university engineering design programs, especially for complex systems. The Georgia Tech graduate program in aerospace systems design, will be used to illustrate the scholarship of integrating knowledge along with the participation in student design competitions to illustrate the scholarship of application. GEORGIA TECH GRADUATE PROGRAM IN AEROSPACE SYSTEMS DESIGN The Georgia Tech Baseline Practice-Oriented M.S. Degree program in Aerospace Systems Design is illustrated in Figure 1. Five courses are included and described as follows: • AE 8113 Introduction to Concurrent Engineering This graduate course was first introduced in 1992 and consists of introducing the students to the generic Concurrent Engineering (CE)/Integrated Product/Process Design/Development (IPPD) methodology developed by the author that can been used for education and research. The generic CE/IPPD methodology is illustrated in Figure 2 and consists of four key elements: Systems Engineering methods/tools, Quality Engineering methods/tools, Top Down Design Decision Support process, and a Computer Integrated Environment.