Student Design Project (saylor.org)

Please note: this legacy course does not offer a certificate and may contain broken links and outdated information. Although archived, it is open for learning without registration or enrollment.

This course will ask you to apply the knowledge you have acquired over the course of the entire mechanical engineering curriculum. It draws upon what you have learned in your courses in mechanics, CAD, materials and processing, thermal and fluid systems, and dynamics and control, just to name a few. This course is equivalent to the capstone course or senior design project that you would need to complete as a senior in a mechanical engineering program in a traditional American university setting.

This course begins in Unit 1 by introducing you to the stages of the design process. We will then focus on tools and skill sets that are particularly important for succeeding in a design project, including design planning, teamwork skills, project management, and design reporting.

Unit 2 covers important design principles and considerations. You will learn about economic implications (you must keep cost in mind while designing!), the ethical, societal, and environmental impacts of design decisions, and professional aspects of design work, including the process of securing intellectual property. The unit also expands on what you learned in previous materials and processing coursework by covering material- and process-selection criteria and approaches.

In Unit 3, you will engage in a capstone design project that applies your knowledge of mechanical engineering. You will start by identifying a problem to solve using engineering design. You will then explore the needs of the project, developing specific metrics necessary to achieve customer requirements. You will engage in both concept generation and refinement, applying engineering knowledge to derive potential solutions to the problem. You will then analyze the potential solutions, arriving at an ultimate decision to move forward with implementation, analysis, and final design evaluation. By the end of the unit and the course, you will have delivered a solution to a design problem and created a comprehensive report detailing the design, how you arrived at it, and a conclusion about its ability to meet the needs of the problem.

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

- Apply engineering design concepts and tools to create the initial design of a product.

- Apply appropriate research techniques to refine the initial product design.

- Apply appropriate resource-planning techniques in the product design.

- Apply appropriate project management tools and techniques in planning the design and manufacture of the product.

- Apply appropriate design codes and documentation in producing the design.

- Calculate engineering costs of a product by using engineering economic tools.

- Create designs that are safe and environmentally friendly.

- Create designs that meet ethical standards and do not violate copyright laws.

- Create relevant design reports and presentations that meet standards.

- Test, validate, evaluate, and optimize engineering designs.

- Apply the concepts learned in this course to understand the design of various engineering products and processes encompassing various technologies.