School of Engineering

BEng(Hons) Final Year - Engineering Design and Computational Methods - DSGN 313
2009 - 2010

Module Scheme

- Staff for Design: Dr David J Grieve, CEng, MIMechE +.
- Staff for CAE: Dr Jason Hughes (CFX) and Dr David J Grieve (FEA)

1. Introduction

This module carries a credit rating of 30 (it is one quarter of the final year) and consists of a number of components:

For the group design assignment, students select their own group members and then choose an assignment - but both of these are subject to agreement with staff. Marine Technology students might like to consider selecting to an assignment with a marine flavour.
Any group interested in tackling the design and make ROV assignment, need to submit the 'design outline proposal' by the date shown in the 'Plan of Work for the Design Part of the Module' table below. The proposal that is judged most feasible to be built in the time and budget allocated, will have as a significant part of their work manufacture a prototype and test it, write a review of the manufacture, report on the test and give a verbal presentation.

The assignments are described on separate links / sheets - see foot of page.

2. Assessment
The 'value in credits' of the assignments are shown below:

Assignment Credit value Hand in date for report, Still to be confirmed
CFX 5 11.00am on Monday 25 - 1 - 2010
FEA 5 11.00am on Friday 26 - 3 - 2010
Adversarial debate 3 n/a
Group design 17 11.00am on Monday 26 - 4 - 2010

The group design assignment has the written report weighted 90% and the oral presentation weighted 10%.

Advice on what constitutes a good design report and how to avoid loss of marks was discussed in the stage 2 Engineering Design module DSGN 215. If you did not take this module or are in any way unclear about this matter, you should study the introduction to that module (at: http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/desframe.htm) in the next few days.

Advice about assessment is contained in General Student Handbook plus general information about the type of work expected for various grades of mark. If you are not familiar with this, you should look at it in the near future.

In addition to the written report, the group design assignment also involves assessment of oral presentations. This will be a 'boardroom' type presentation where each group will present their solution to the Design staff. Every member of each group must speak and the total time allocated for the group presentation will by 3 x number of persons in the group, minutes. You should note that attendance at this presentation - and speaking - is mandatory, absence without validated extenuating circumstances will result in the loss of the marks for this part of the assessment. There will be a lecture early in the first term providing advice on the speaking and on doing the presentation.

We need to give students individual marks for the group design assignments, so there are certain requirements. A lecture at the start of the term will give guidance about group working.

Group Design Assignment Assessment Requirements

i) You must elect a group chair person and a group secretary.

ii) You must hold regular formal meetings in one of the time tabled slots with the member of staff allocated to your group present. Formal minutes must be recorded by the secretary and circulated. The member of staff is present primarily as an observer: to ensure that all members are contributing, that nothing is going seriously wrong - technically or organisationally. The staff member may from time to time to join in the discussion.

N.B. Click here to see schedule of the formal meetings you are expected to attend with the assignment supervisor. You must also arrange additional meetings.

iii) You must put your name - clearly written - at the bottom of every page in the report that you were responsible for.

iv) Every group member must include a brief description of their initial ideas.

v) Every group member must include a brief review of the overall design.

vi) As well as the paper comb bound copy of the report, each group MUST submit a copy of the report + all appendices etc on a CD, the SoE reception office will provide blank CDs.

vii) Peer assessment forms will be issued to all groups which must be completed and returned. Where a group has worked well and everyone is judged to have contributed reasonably, these will probably make no difference. Where there have been problems or where the quality of contributions by group members has varied significantly, these marks will be taken into account.

NB viii) Length of written reports. To discourage overly long reports, often containing large quantities of appendices, an indicative maximum report length of 100 pages (font size 12, Arial or MS Sans Serif) including appendices, is now specified.

The Marking Schemes for the Group Design Assignment is:

Presentation of the written report10%
Analysis of design30%
Materials/ Manufacture20%
Quality of the design, ideas and thinking, discussion30%
Oral presentation 10%

The Marking Scheme for the Design and Manufacturing Assignment is:

a) Written report content on: Design analysis, materials, manufacture 40%
b) The physical prototype and tests 30%
c) Written report content on: Manufacturing and testing review 20%
Oral presentation 10%


(a) and (c) form part of the same report.

You should note:
i) Although 10% is allocated to the written presentation quality, where the presentation is so poor that we are unable to understand calculations or aspects of the design, more than 10% may be lost.
ii) The group design assignments are to some extent open ended and there are normally many good designs possible. Inevitably marking such work involves some subjective judgement. The Staff are aware of this problem and the marking of your work is carefully moderated to ensure it is marked fairly.

3. Group Organisation

For efficient operation you should work in an organised manner, the following is suggested:


a) Chief designer / chair - Write overall summary and conclusion, assemble and check coherence of the report. Will also carry out some specialist design.
b) Secretary - Take and issue minutes, normally share the writing of the executive summary, overall introduction and overall conclusion. Will also carry out some specialist design.
c) Specialist designers - who are responsible for materials, stress analysis, dynamics, heat transfer, manufacturing methods, costing etc.

4. Group Work Organisation

The stages in the process can be summarised as:

  • i) Organising the group and refining the design specification
  • ii) Information retrieval
  • iii) Brain storming possible solutions. Initial evaluation
  • iv) Detail design
  • v) Design layouts, small number of detail drawings
  • vi) Prepare presentation
  • vii) Prepare and assemble report
  • But note design is an iterative process!!

5. Group Meetings
Normally formal meetings should last no longer than an hour, the chair should prevent people talking too much. A suggested format is as follows:
First third - chair asks all group members to report briefly work progress and any difficult issues - each member has about 2 minutes.
Second third - open discussion, review if progress is satisfactory and to try and resolve difficult issues.
Final third - agree action - and who does what.

6.1 Plan of Work for the Design part of the Module

Week commencing:Topic
28 - 9 - 2009Introduction to module, adversarial debate and group work.
12 - 10 - 2009Adversarial debates. Gp A: 15.00 - 15.25; Gp B: 15.30 - 15.55; Gp C: 16.00 - 16.25
19 - 10 - 2009Complete debates. Gp D: 15.00 - 15.25; Gp E: 15.30 - 15.55; Gp F: 16.00 - 16.25 and Introduction to the group design assignment.
27 - 10 -2008 First Auburn Video Conference / Formal design group meetings / occasional lecture.
23 - 11 - 2009Marine Technology 'design outlines' - making their case to have a manufacturing budget
15 - 3 - 2010Design group oral presentations, details will be published nearer the time


6.2 Scheme of Work for the Computational Fluid Dynamics part of the Module

Week No. Week Commencing Topic
10 28th Sept 2009 Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFX components, file structures and file management.
Exercise 1
11 5th Oct. Mass continuity and Navier Stokes equations
Exercises 2 and 3
Set course work
12 12th Oct Discretisation, Boundary Conditions, Solution, Meshes and Refinement, Inflation.
Exercise 4
13 19th Oct Turbulence modelling, extracting numerical data.
Exercise 4 cont.
14 26th Oct Surgery
15 2nd Nov Surgery

Schedule is subject to alteration. Details of alterations to time table, venues and assessment notified by the students portal.

Recommended Texts
'Computational Fluid Dynamics', by John D Anderson, pub. McGraw-Hill.
An interesting, very well written introduction to CFD.

'Practical Ship Hydrodynamics', Volker Bertram, Butterworth Heinemann.
Useful overview of CFD methods, particularly for marine applications (together with good stuff on many aspects of ship hydrodynamics).

'Sailing Yascht Design: Theory', ed. A Claughton, J Wellicome and A Shenoi, pub. Longman.
A good introductory chapter on CFD, as applied particularly to sailing yachts (and much motre interesting information on the design of yachts).


6.3 Plan of Work for the FEA part of the Module

-

11th Jan 2010

Lect

Finite element analysis – introduction

DJG

-

Jan 18th

Lect

FEA – theory

DJG

-

Jan 25th

Lect

FEA – theory

DJG

-

Feb 1st

Prac

FEA practical + computation

DJG

-

Feb 8th

Prac

FEA practical + computation

DJG

-

Feb 15th

Prac

FEA practical + computation
Optimising a Design with FEA

DJG

-

Feb 22nd

Prac

FEA practical + computation

DJG

Schedule is subject to alteration. Details of alterations to timetable and venues will be posted on the BEng 3 notice board, first floor Smeaton corridor or on this web page.


7.1 Topics for the debates:


i) New Orleans should not be rebuilt in its present location as it is not viable in the medium or long term.
ii)Too large a proportion of the UK research effort is put into defence to the detriment of the UK as a whole.
iii) The UK should expand the use of nuclear power to generate electricity.
iv) Modern roll on - roll off ferries are not as safe as the Titanic.
v) Legislation relating to end of life disposal of products is bad for manufacturing industries.
vi) Engineering progress in the UK is stifled by an excess of regulation.
vii) National speed limits impede improvements in car design.
viii) Manned space exploration is good for the engineering industry sector.

7.2 Link to the design assignments

7.3 Link to CAE assignment

8.1 References - for Design
"Mechanical Engineering Design Notes - Theme: Automotive Engines", by David J Grieve, ISBN: 978-0-9560037-0-6, £12.
As for the stage 2 Engineering Design course
PLUS
Link to Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) Information Centre

Forces needed for digging / trenching: "Foundations of Engineering Geology", by Waltham, A. C., Chapman and Hall.

8.2 References

- For FEA

See entries on the Reading List, access from 'Index to Online Documentation'.


Return to Online Documentation Index Page

Dr David J Grieve, CEng, MIMechE. 19th January 2010.