Academic practice/Design interventions: An activity-based design course for conceptualizing failure and factor of safety

Nikolaos E. Vitoroulis, Changhong Zhang, Kishore Pochiraju

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

Teaching design throughout the eight-semesters of undergraduate studies, termed as the design spine, is a hallmark of the engineering curriculum at our university. As most engineering designs must meet some level of mechanical performance requirements, this third-semester design spine course focuses on the design of load carrying components. This course requires the introductory course on mechanics of materials as either a prerequisite or a co-requisite. The pedagogy in this course centers on introducing design vectors that span material behavior, geometry choices, and manufacturing processes in a laboratory environment while using team-based learning methods. We recently developed a series of activities that introduce material behavior, failure modes, uncertainty in material properties, understanding the factor of safety in design, and culminating in a planar truss design and validation exercise. The course presents the evolution of complexity in the design vector through experiments that focus on design for tensile strength (material selection for strength), compression/buckling, (material selection and geometry design for stiffness enhancement), and joint shearing, (material selection, geometry design and process selection). Student teams analyze the statistical variability and parameter uncertainty using the data generated by all teams enrolled in the course. Using a data-driven approach, we introduce and reinforce the concept of factor of safety using simple reliability theories that model uncertainty in component strength. The course culminates the design, testing and optimization of a space-spanning truss using the data generated from the earlier activities. The student performance is assessed directly from the student teams' data submissions and lab/design report grades, and indirectly through learning outcome surveys. Student teamwork performance is measured by a public peer-evaluation rating scheme, which also feeds back to the team selection process. This paper presents the activities, the instructional methods, assessment data for the pilot implementations, and a comparison of the student performance from the prior years.

Original languageEnglish
JournalASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
Volume2018-June
StatePublished - 23 Jun 2018
Event125th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition - Salt Lake City, United States
Duration: 23 Jun 201827 Dec 2018

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