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Practical

Engineering

Design

Practical

Engineering

Design

Edited by

Maja Bystrom

Bruce Eisenstein

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Taylor Francis

Taylor & Francis Croup

Boca Raton London New YotỲ Singapore

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PREFACE

D esign gives engineering students an opportunity to practice their profes￾sion by designing a real-w orld solution to an engineering problem in a way

that can best be likened to an apprenticeship. In the early days o f engineer￾ing education, virtually the entire curriculum consisted o f students working

w ith faculty and practitioners from industry in an apprenticeship setting to

solve problem s that w ere identified by local industry as critical. Thus, many

engineering schools began as m ining, agriculture, or technical colleges to

serve local needs.

Follow ing W orld W ar II and the enorm ous num ber o f technological

innovations spaw ned during the w ar years, engineering schools shifted to

an engineering science m odel o f engineering education in which all courses

becam e science based instead of experience based. A lthough the pendulum

is swinging back in the direction o f an experience-based engineering edu￾cation, today’s students are left with practically no exposure to the real

problem s facing industry and society if they do not have a form al program

in engineering design.

The main benefit o f the design project you are about to undertake is

the opportunity to recapture the practical experience that is now regrettably

m issing from the rest o f the engineering cuniculum . Students can have the

satisfaction o f carrying a project through from the early design stage to a

working prototype. In the process, you will leam about working in teams,

scheduling, budgeting (both tim e and dollars), fabrication, docum entation,

and presentation. You w ill have the pride that com es from a jo b w ell done

and, as an added bonus, an entry on your resum e that w ill help in getting

a good job. For those who envision their future in an entrepreneurial track,

the experiences and know ledge that you will gain from a w ell-done design

project can accurately m irror the process of running your own company.

At the outset, a design project is intim idating: you are required to either

take a project description from an industry o r faculty advisor or com e up

with your own project idea and find an advisor. You then m ust com plete

the project design and docum entation and turn in a com pleted prototype in

a relatively short am ount of time. It is no w onder, when you have very little

practical training, that this may seem to be a difficult, if not im possible,

task. However, a successful design project is certainly achievable if you

break the project into subtasks, turn to faculty or industry advisors for

assistance, and keep yourself and your team organized.

M ost universities have some form o f engineering design in order to

allow students practice in com pleting an entire extensive project. A formal

course gives you the room to explore and experience the design process at

i relatively little risk (other than a low grade) before you are plunged into your

’radical entirely responsible for the development of a product or

ingineering design. ___

Even if you have had solid work experience through co-op jobs or other

means, a formal course in design gives you the opportunity to hone die skills

necessary for success in any work position. In both course-based design and

real jobs you will typically work in a group, and therefore you will have to

be able to successfully allocate duties and resolve inưa-group conflicts. A

design project gives you the chance to experience working in a team whose

members have different working styles and personalities, with an advisor

available to help if there are any difficulties. The design process will also help

you to hone your engineering skills, the problem-solving skills that have been

subtly inserted into all o f your classes since you were a freshman. In this way

it brings together everything you have learned — not the obscure mathematical

transforms or chemical processes requừed in undergraduate classes but rather

the thought processes requừed to arrive at conclusions from a starting set of

ideas or hypotheses by examining the ưade-offs and alternative paths. Finally,

it is almost impossible to be a good engineer today without possessing good

communication skills. Unfortunately, oral and written communications are

among the topics that are often overlooked or underemphasized in engineering

curricula. By producing written (and often oral) reports o f your project, you

can obtain immediate feedback and leam how to fine-tune your presentation

skills. This will benefit you immensely when you take a job in inđusưy and

are required to write project proposals or present ideas to your managers.

While it is often the case that the number of requirements for a design project

are great, and the allotted time very short, it is an almost unanimous opinion

of graduating seniors that the design experience was valuable and, in most

cases, enjoyable.

This handbook is an outgrowth of a set o f senior design guidelines used

in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and as an extension

of the Senior Design Handbook written in 1996 by James E. Mitchell for the

Civil and Architectural Engineering Department at Drexel University. This

handbook is aimed at students in design classes as well as novice engineers

who are taking on their first project as a co-op assignment or on theừ first

permanent job. It was written to answer some of the most pressing and most

often repeated questions that we have heard from seniors or novice engineers

as we have either taught various courses on design or served as project advi￾sors. Unfortunately, there is no formal checklist by which you can complete

a design process; however, this handbook provides a set of guidelines and

includes examples of different aspects of the process. This is by no means a

complete manual for the design process, and thus at the end of every chapter

we have included what we feel are some of the best references on the topics

covered. We strongly urge you to turn to these references for further informa￾tion and simply use this book as a set of guidelines for your project.

The topics are arranged in the order in which you are likely to encounter

them during your project. In the first chapter an overview of the design process

is given. If you are at a loss as to where to start your project, you should read

this chapter in detail. If, however, you already have a solid idea in mind, have

formed a team, and have begun the design, this chapter will refresh your

memory of important design aspects.

The second chapter briefly discusses how to consider the impact of your

project on society. Often, the ethics and social impacts of projects are subtle

and require considerable reflection to discern. The chapter provides a series

determ ine the benefits and risks o f your project and can serve as a guideline

as you m ove from the w orld o f academ ia into industry after graduation. P ref

The third, fourth, and fifth chapters cover project scheduling, m anagem ent,

and budgeting. W hile these chapters contain useful tips on these topics, not

all o f the m aterial presented w ill be requừed for all design projects. For

instance, in C hapter 5, three types o f project budgets are discussed. Your design

course may only requứe that you produce a budget for your prototype. H ow ­

ever, it may be interesting for you to scan the rem ainder o f the chapter to see

how budgets m ight be produced for a project in industry.

The sixth and seventh chapters contain guidelines for w ritten and oral

presentation o f your work and discuss how to m ake your project appealing to

a variety o f audiences. O bviously there is no clear-cut form ula for doing so;

much effort has to be put into writing and speaking, and many revisions

perform ed to obtain fine-tuned results. These chapters provide im portant, but

by no m eans exhaustive, tips for arranging the w ritten docum ents and the oral

presentation.

The eighth and ninth chapters are included as extra m aterial for those who

have unique projects w ith intellectual property that should be protected o r that

can be expanded into a business. A gain, these chapters are not com plete

discussions o f the topics, but are designed to answ er basic questions such as

what is intellectual property and w hat steps w ould be needed if you wanted

to use your ideas to start a business. If you think your ideas should be protected,

we encourage you to contact your organization’s intellectual property office

(m ost com panies, colleges, and universities have such an office, typically as

part o f theữ research offices, or at least have a full- or part-tim e lawyer who

can advise on these issues). If you are a student and think you may w ant to

start a business based on your project (we know m any students w ho have done

so), you should contact the entrepreneurial or incubator center at your univer￾sity. If your university does not have facilities such as these, you should

consider finding a faculty m em ber who has experience in starting a com pany

and ask for ideas or assistance. It is also a good idea to take a business or

m anagem ent course o r tw o so that you w ill know w hat to expect as you start

to deal with the com plex issues o f finding financing and m anaging em ployees.

We have included in the Appendix a set o f excerpts from senior design

reports and presentations that you can refer to in order to obtain ideas about

%.«.n content o f different docum ents. These docum ents were selected to

different types o f projects and are w hat we consider to be both

excellent selections o f project topic and w ell-written docum ents. These reports

will be reíeư ed to throughout the docum ent and both their qualities and faults

w ill be discussed. T he faults and om issions of the reports were not necessarily

due to laxness on the part o f the authors; they w ere in part due to the changing

requirem ents as the Senior D esign course evolved at Drexel University. These

docum ents em phasize the fact that no m atter how well designed and presented,

a project and its docum entation can always be improved. We thank the authors

o f these reports: D avid Brouda and Kevin Lenhart for The Talking Book and

Keith C hristm an, A dam O ’Donnell, Chayil Tim m erm an, and Sum a Varghese

for Coreware IPv4 to IPv6 Bridge. W ithout their generosity in sharing their

work, this book would have been m issing a vital section.

You will find that there are some points that are em phasized over and over

again, or repeated through every chapter (such as getting an early start, keeping

backups and good notes, asking people for help, taking care to consider all

aspects of the design, docum entation, and presentation). This is not because

there is a lack o f topics to cover, but rather because all o f the authors have

learned through experience how im portant these points are.

Finally, as mentioned above, this handbook is not an exhaustive list of

design procedures and requirements and does not contain solutions to all of

fig the problems and challenges you will encounter during your design project.

You should work with your manager, advisors, or mentors such as other faculty

in your department or senior staff in your company to ensure that you are

meeting the requirements of the course and have not omitted significant steps

in the design process. You should also consult your peers and ask for candid

opinions of your project ideas and presentation, since (just as in a mechanical

or electronic system) feedback is often the most valuable tool in improving

the output. Often it only takes another perspective to obtain insight into the

solution of a difficult problem, or your peers may know of someone who can

assist you. You should also consult the books and Web sites in the suggestions

for further reading, since they contain more complete discussions of ứie topics.

We wish you success during your design project. With time, care, and

attention, everyone can produce an excellent design or prototype while gaining

experience in the many aspects of the design process.

Bruce Eisenstein

Maja Bystrom

CONTRIBUTORS

Valaríe M eliotes A rm s

Department of English and

Philosophy

Drexel University

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Kim berly s. Chotkowski

InterDigital Communications

Corporation

King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

M oshe Kam

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department

Drexel University

Philadelphia. Pennsylvania

R obert J. L on n g

School of Biomedical Engineering,

Science and Health Systems

Drexel University

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Jam es E . M itchell

Department of Civil, Architectural,

and Environmental Engineering

Drexel University

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Stew art D. Personick

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department

Drexel University

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

CONTENTS

1 T he D esign P rocess................................................................................................. 1

B ruce Eisenstein, Stew art D, Personick, Jam es E. Mitchell, a n d

M aja Bystrom

1.1 W hat Is a D esign Project?....................................................................................... 1

1.2 The Steps to a Successful P ro ject........................................................................2

1.2.1 Choosing Your Team and A d v iso r........................................................3

The T e a m ................................................................................................3

The A d v iso r...........................................................................................4

C o-A dvisors...........................................................................................5

1.2.2 Identifying an O pportunity or a P ro b lem ...........................................5

1.2.3 Selecting and Evaluating Your Project T o p ic ....................................6

Selecting a T o p ic .................................................................................6

Evaluating Your T o p ic........................................................................7

1.2.4 G enerating and Evaluating D esign A lternatives.............................14

Project M anagem ent and Scheduling...........................................15

Developing Design Specifications................................................ 16

Evaluating Design A lternatives..................................................... 17

Defining the Criteria for S uccess.................................................17

Developing Decision M atrices...................................................... 18

1.2.5 Simulation and M odeling.......................................................................19

1.2.6 Im plem enting Your D esign.................................................................... 19

1.2.7 Testing and Verifying the D esign........................................................20

Test Plans and P rocedures..............................................................20

1.2.8 Documenting and Presenting Your W ork......................................... 22

D ocum enting.......................................................................................23

Presenting.............................................................................................23

1.3 C onclusions............................................................................................................. 24

Further R eading.................................................................................................................25

2 Ethics and the Social Im pacts o f D esign P ro jects....................................27

M oshe Kam

2.1 W hy E thics?.............................................................................................................. 27

2.1.1 The B lood-Carrying P ip e ...................................................................... 27

2.1.2 The Plagiarism D etector.........................................................................27

2.1.3 Fighting C rim e in C y b ersp ace............................................................ 28

2.2 Social Im plications............................................................................................... 29

2.3 Q uestions and T ests................................................................................................30

Ì .Ĩ . 1 Ask Yourself: W ho Is A ffected?....................... .30

tíi 2.3.2 Ask Yourself: What Is ứie Effect of the Project

Practical Natural Resources?..................................................................... 30

En^neerine Yourself: Is Development of the Product Safe?.................... 31

2.3.4 Ask Yourself: Is the Development of the Product Eứiical?......... 32

2.3.5 Ask Yourself: What Is the Effect o f the Project

on Human Welfare and on Human Rights?..................................32

2.3.6 Ask Yourself: What Could Go W rong?....................................... 32

2.3.7 Ask Yourself: Can This Product Be Used Unlawfully

or U nethically?...................................................................................32

2.3.8 Ask Yourself Questions about Risk and L iability..................... 33

2.4 Acting Ethically................................................................................................ 33

2.4.1 Understand Your Relationship widi the Sponsor........................33

2.4.2 Keep Records........................ ............................................................ 34

2.4.3 Finally, Speak U p ............................................................................. 34

References......................1.......................................................................................... 34

Further Reading.......................................................................................................... 35

3 Project M anagement..................................................................................... 37

James E. Mitchell

3.1 Inưoduction........................................................................................................ 37

3.1.1 What It Is and Why You Want I t ...................................................37

3.1.2 You Do It A ừeady............................................................................ 37

3.1.3 Formal Project M anagement...........................................................38

Goals................... .7...................................................................... 38

Time Frame....................................................................................38

Resources....................................................................................... 38

3.2 Scheduling: The Key Support Tool............................................................... 39

3.2.1 Scheduling for the Working Professional.................................... 39

3.2.2 Scheduling for the Student or Early Professional......................39

3.3 The Basics of Scheduling................................................................................40

3.3.1 D eadlines............................................................................................40

3.3.2 Tasks....................................................................................................40

3.3.3 Logic: The Netw ork..........................................................................41

3.3.4 Eifort: Time to Complete Tasks......................................................41

Sample Scheduling Logic N etw ork......................................... 43

Duration vs. Working Hours Effort...........................................43

Common Time Estimation E ư o rs.............................................43

3.3.5 Resources............................................................................................ 43

3.3.6 C o sts....................................................................................................44

3.4 How 10 Schedule..............................................................................................44

3.4.1 Levels of Scheduling........................................................................44

Simplest Schedule: An Organized L ist....................................44

Medium Level Schedule: A Gannt Chart................................ 45

Complex Schedule: A Scheduling Program............................ 45

Using a Complex Program for Your Design Project..............46

3.5 Tools for Scheduling....................................................................................... 47

3.5.1 Calendar: Paper or Computer..........................................................47

3.5.2 Paper and Pencil................................................................................47

3.5.3 Electronic Tools................................................................................. 47

eProject.com: An Example of a Web-Based

Project Tool....................................................................................47

Spreadsheets.................................................................................. 49

3.6 A Senior Design Schedule E xam ple.............................................................49 !

3.6.1 Overview o f Scheduling T ask s........................................................... 49 Conte

Entering the D a ta .............................................................................. 50

Project Summary G annt...................................................................50

N etw ork D etail....................................................................................51

N etw ork C om plex..............................................................................51

Resources Table...................................................................................51

Resource: Individual H o u rs............................................................53

Resource G raph..................................................................................54

Resource U sage H ours..................................................................... 55

Resource Costs for P ro jec t.............................................................55

Task Hours over T im e......................................................................56

Task C ost Sum m ary..........................................................................56

3.6.2 Illustration o f D etailed Tasks...............................................................57

D eciding the Project Team ..............................................................57

D eciding the G eneral Project.........................................................58

D eciding Team R oles....................................................................... 58

Short Project S tatem en t...................................................................58

Develop Project Schedule...............................................................59

Perform R esearch.............................................................................. 59

W rite Proposal....................................................................................60

D evelop P resentation.......................................................................60

Full Gannt: Initial S ection..............................................................61

Full Gannt: Final Section................................................................ 61

3.7 Sum m ary................................................................................................................... 61

References........................................................................................................................... 63

Further R eading.................................................................................................................63

4 T eam w ork............................................................................................................... 65

Jam es E. M itchell

4.1 Teamwork and Team R o le s.................................................................................65

4.1.1 Talking about Team w ork.....................................................................65

4.1.2 Teamwork R o le s....................................................................................66

4.2 A ssigning and Rotating Teamwork R o les...................................................... 68

Í ria rify Task Responsibilities and S chedule...................................................68

^ -Í in jm Dynamics: The Phases o f D evelopm ent...............................................69

F orm ing..................................................................................................... 69

4.4.2 S torm ing................................................................................................... 69

4.4.3 N o rm in g ....................................................................................................69

4.4.4 P erfo rm in g ...............................................................................................70

4.5 Conflict R esolution............................................................................................... 70

4.5.1 Act C alm ly...............................................................................................70

4.5.2 C larify the D ispute.................................................................................71

4.5.3 Look for C om prom ise..........................................................................71

4.5.4 Use an External P arty ...........................................................................71

4.6 W hat to Do W hen You Fall B eh in d ................................................................. 71

4.6.1 U nanticipated or Underestim ated T asks......................................... 72

4.6.2 C hanged M in d s...................................................................................... 72

4.6.3 Ineffective Com m unication................................................................. 73

4.6.4 Procrastination........................................................................................73

4.7 C om m unications.................................................................................................... 74

4.7.1 Hold a Regular M eeting: With F ood............................................... 74