Ebook: Engineering design and the product life cycle : relating customer needs, societal values, business acumen, and technical fundamentals

Engineering design is distinctly different than analysis: the search for a 'best solution' rather than the quest for the single correct answer is the basic differentiation between these concepts. Engineers necessarily follow a design process to arrive at their proposed design. In this process, realistic constraints must be considered. For example, the phrase 'if money were no object' is often discussed, but is rarely the case. These constraints limit the design possibilities; or rather, they form realistic bounds on a realistic design. As the design process begins to generate potential designs, each must be evaluated based on the specific criteria that define the optimal design. Engineering Design and Constraints will concisely describe the engineering design process and the need for consideration of constraints and criteria: arguably the difference between design in school and the 'real world'. The book will provide professors and students with a resource from which to base their design projects to better mirror engineering design in industry. Additionally, ABET (the engineering accreditation body) expects graduates of engineering programs to achieve a set of student learning outcomes, including the ability to design within realistic constraints. This text will help achieve that goal. By providing specific examples of what realistic design constraints are and how they fit into the overall product design experience, students will be better prepared for their capstone coursework, and their careers in their chosen fields. Unfortunately, many engineering faculty possess little to no industrial experience, having been appointed to their faculty position directly from graduate school. Therefore, many of the principles needed for successful product design may be foreign to them. The proposed book will serve as a concise reference for these instructors, illustrating how their knowledge base fits into the grand scheme of design