Introduction to Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering (Fall 2016)

Resources

• • Syllabus (Fall 2016)

• Design Project

  • • Pt 4: Final Presentation (due week of 11/29). Take your concept to completion.

      • Make a drawing of your product/solution

      • Estimate your sales, both in terms of the total market, and what fraction of the market will be your sales

      • Do a rough-order-of-magnitude (ROM) cost, as we did in class

        • Include estimates for the cost of materials, assembly, infrastructure, transportation, overhead, retail markup

        • Set a sale price

      • Find 3 volunteers (NOT in this class) to review your project

        • Explain to them the original problem/pain you are solving

        • Show them your final design

        • Have them rate your design (using your metrics, plus any additional metrics they think are important)

      • In class, you will have 10 minutes to:

        • Briefly (haiku-length, or using a picture/diagram) introduce your problem. Make sure that you include a "pain" slide, that demonstrates/shows the original pain/need that motivated this problem.

        • Review the metrics and benchmarks, showing that there is a gap in the metrics where the benchmarks can be improved

        • Review 3 of the losing concepts you tried out before settling on your final concept

        • Show your final concept in both CAD and practical terms, if possible

        • Provide your cost estimate

        • Tell us what your outside reviewers thought of your product. Did you make any changes based on their feedback?

        • Explain the strengths and weaknesses of this design. What is good about it? What is bad about it? What would you need in order to improve it? (Examples: More time to design it, better technical knowledge to refine it, a whole new concept, and/or new technologies that haven't been invented, yet.)

    • Pt 3: Concept Generation and Selection (due week of 11/14). Now is the time to come up with solutions to the problem.

      • Come up with 6 concepts to the solve the problem.

        • These concepts must be new (i.e., not an existing product or service)

        • These concepts must be distinct (each concept must have something important/different about it compared to the other concepts). A bicycle with two wheels is distinct from a "bicycle" with three wheels. A red bicycle is not distinct from a blue bicycle.

        • One of your concepts must be the status quo (i.e., doing nothing, if no product currently exists, or an existing product that has suboptimal equilibrium).

        • One of your concepts must be crazy (i.e., is impractical, impossible or otherwise unlikely to work)

        • If you come up with more than 6 concepts, pare down your list of concepts to the best 4 (plus "status quo" and "crazy"), using your metrics (see below).

      • Using the (updated) metric calculator from Part 2, evaluate all 6 concepts.

      • Create a 7th concept that is the combination of two (or more) of the 6 concepts (i.e., combine the strengths of two concepts that, hopefully, offset the weaknesses). Rate this concept as well.

      • Choose which concept you want to pursue, and explain why you picked this one over the others.

      • In class, you will have 7 minutes to:

        • Briefly (haiku-length, or using a picture/diagram) introduce your problem

        • Show your 6 concepts (using a picture/diagram for each)

        • Show your rating system

        • Introduce your 7th concept and its score

        • Explain which of the 7 concepts you choose, and why

    • Pt 2: Benchmarks and Metrics (due week of 10/10, in class). For one problem, do the following

      • Find 5 benchmarks (existing products or attempts to solve your problem)

        • At least one benchmark must be from outside the domain

        • One of your benchmarks should be the current solution to the problem (or "nothing", if no current solution exists)

      • Define your metrics - the "score card" that will be used to compare two designs and pick the best one

        • You should have between 3 and 7 metrics.

        • The best metrics are measurable - you can assign an objective number to it, rather than a feeling.

        • Weight your metrics to come up with a total score

      • Evaluate your 5 benchmarks using the metrics

        • Score each of the benchmarks to the best of your ability

        • Provide the rating/scoring on a spreadsheet that is shared with the TA and instructor

      • In class, you will briefly

        • Introduce your problem in one slide (show, don't tell)

        • Your 5 benchmarks (again, show each, somehow)

        • Your evaluation spreadsheet.

        • Explain what was surprising or unexpected about the results.

    • Pt 1: Find the Pain (due week of 09/21, in class). In your team, identify 3 pains/problems that could be addressed by a product (new or improved).

      • The pain must be solvable, meaning that it is something that can be addressed by the creation, deletion or change of something physical. For this class, the focus is on "widgets", not public works. In other words, it must be something you could manufacture/build.

      • For each pain, you must present the pain to the class in the form of a haiku (3 lines: 5 syllables, then 7 syllables, then 5).

        • You will write your haiku on the board

        • Focus on the problem, not on solutions

    • Design Teams

    • Tuesday AM (Section 36)

• • • • Thursday AM (Section 37)

• Playpumps (Due 09/09)

  • • First video (8 minutes)

    • Second video (20 minutes, starting about 3 minutes in)

    • Assignment (Fall 2016)

• Passport

  • • Assignment (Part 1, due in class during the week of 08/29). Create your own Google Site for your Passport. (A 4-minute tutorial on creating Sites is here.)

      • Add your name on the Site

      • Attach the categories "AENG-MENG 1001", "Parks College", and "passport". (Important: I mistakenly say/type "portfolio" in the example. Please use passport as a category, not portfolio.)

      • Give view access (not edit access) to me and to the TA. (Our e-mail addresses are in the Syllabus, above.)

    • Opportunities

      • Pure Idea Generator Competition

      • SLU Medlaunch. Here's the email from their VP:

        • MEDLaunch, SLU’s very own biomedical and entrepreneurship incubator, is currently accepting applications for team leader roles for this upcoming academic year. As a part of MEDLaunch, participants work in multidisciplinary teams under the guidance of clinical and industry mentors to develop innovations in areas including (but not limited to) surgical devices, health information technology, and medical diagnostics.

        • If you have interests at all in the medical field and leadership, please apply through this link—http://www.medlaunchstl.com--by Friday, September 9th.

• • Block Diagram Assignment (due the week of 08/29). Choose either a product (e.g., internal combustion engine) or a process (e.g., secure communications from London the French Resistance in World War II). You may work in teams, but your teams must submit one product/process per person on the team. (In other words, a team of 3 must do this assignment for three different items/process.)

    1. Draw the block diagram, showing input and output relations between the action blocks. Your block diagram must have at least three elements.

    2. Use the block diagram to diagnose a potential problem. (For example, if the engine won't run, it could be because of a problem with the air intake.)

    3. Use the block diagram to identify a change/improvement that might make the system better. (For example, in the secure-communications problem, the line connecting London to the French Resistance is extremely vulnerable. We might be able to improve things by hiding/obscuring the line of communications between the two - perhaps by embedding our messages in newspaper advertisements.)

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Design Project Teams

Spring 2016 Assignments (may be changed before they are officially assigned for Fall 2016)

• Design Project

  • • Pt 1: Find the Pain (due 02/22). In your team, identify 3 pains/problems that you would want to solve in this class.

      • The pain must be solvable, meaning that it is something that can be addressed by the creation, deletion or change of something physical. For this class, the focus is on "widgets" not public works.

      • For each pain, you must present the pain to the class in the form of a haiku (3 lines: 5 syllables, then 7 syllables, then 5).

        • You will write your haiku on the board

        • Focus on the problem, not on solutions

    • Pt 2: Benchmarks and Metrics (due 03/14). For one problem, do the following

      • Find 5 benchmarks (existing products or attempts to solve your problem)

        • At least one benchmark must be from outside the domain

        • One of your benchmarks should be the current solution to the problem (or "nothing", if no current solution exists)

      • Define your metrics - the "score card" that will be used to compare two designs and pick the best one

        • You should have between 3 and 7 metrics.

        • The best metrics are measurable - you can assign an objective number to it, rather than a feeling.

        • Weight your metrics to come up with a total score

      • Evaluate your 5 benchmarks using the metrics

        • Score each of the benchmarks to the best of your ability

        • Provide the rating/scoring on a spreadsheet that is shared with the TA and instructor

      • In class, you will briefly (haiku-length, or provide a picture/diagram) introduce your problem, your 5 benchmarks, and your evaluation spreadsheet. Explain what was surprising or unexpected about the results.

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