Alastair Conway

HOLISTIC ENGINEERING DESIGN: A COMBINED SYNCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS APPROACH

To aid the creation and through-life support of large, complex engineering products, organizations are placing a greater emphasis on constructing complete and accurate records of design activities. Current documentary approaches are not sufficient to capture activities and decisions in their entirety and can lead to organizations revisiting and in some cases reworking design decisions in order to understand previous design episodes. Design activities are undertaken in a variety of modes; many of which are dichotomous, and thus each require separate documentary mechanisms to capture information in an efficient manner. It is possible to identify the modes of learning and transaction to describe whether an activity is aimed at increasing a level of understanding or whether it involves manipulating information to achieve a tangible task. The dichotomy of interest in this paper is that of synchronous and asynchronous working, where engineers may work alternately as part of a group or as individuals and where different forms of record are necessary to adequately capture the processes and rationale employed in each mode. This paper introduces complimentary approaches to achieving richer representations of design activities performed synchronously and asynchronously, and through the undertaking of a design based case study, highlights the benefit of each approach. The resulting records serve to provide a more complete depiction of activities undertaken, and provide positive direction for future co-development of the approaches.

Enhancing the design dialogue: an architecture to document engineering design activities

This paper charts the development of a system architecture designed to address the challenges associated with creating accurate and re-usable records of synchronous design activities. It begins by describing the context of through-life support of engineering products, then presents the Knowledge Enhanced Notes system development work undertaken and provides direction for future research work in this area. An empirical research approach was adopted for this work incorporating 11 experimental episodes, ethnographic studies and case-based evaluation of the developed system. The approach and development of the system architecture within this research build upon and extend existing research in the area of knowledge and information capture. The proposed system architecture is proven to enhance the record of engineering design activities, demonstrating that the implementation of software-based tools can have a positive impact on the creation of a more accurate and complete record of activities. This research is focused on one category of design activities – synchronous; therefore, future research that focuses on asynchronous working, leading to an overall enhancement of design working, is needed. While the focus of the research was to aid the creation and through-life support of large, complex engineering products, the solution is entirely generic in its application to synchronous activities.

A novel methodology for in-process monitoring of flow forming

Flow forming (FF) is an incremental cold working process with near-net-shape forming capability. Failures by fracture due to high deformation can be unexpected and sometimes catastrophic, causing tool damage. If process failures can be identified in real time, an automatic cut-out could prevent costly tool damage. Sound and vibration monitoring is well established and commercially viable in the machining sector to detect current and incipient process failures, but not for FF. A broad-frequency microphone was used to record the sound signature of the manufacturing cycle for a series of FF parts. Parts were flow formed using single and multiple passes, and flaws were introduced into some of the parts to simulate the presence of spontaneously initiated cracks. The results show that this methodology is capable of identifying both introduced defects and spontaneous failures during flow forming. Further investigation is needed to categorise and identify different modes of failure and identify further potential applications in rotary forming.

Experimental Investigation on Shape Evolution in Metal Forming Hybrid Process

The feasibility of combining spinning, shear forming and flow forming processes has been demonstrated through manufacturing of a representative of a hub component using industrial scale hybrid-forming machine available at the Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC). The manufacturing cycle consisted of single to multiple passes of shear forming, spinning and flow forming. The research has proven that the spinning, shear forming and flow forming can be combined using a single machine with a single set of tooling and single process cycle. Circumferential and axial cracking was observed in initial set of trials which were eliminated using a series of experiments. The methodology that was used in these series of trials to remove the cracks/defects that may occur during forming of such component is presented here.

Specification of an information capture system to support distributed engineering design teams

The global distribution of design teams and the support of design activities within the digital domain has seen an increase in the need for computational systems for information capture, storage and use. Although significant work has taken place in managing detailed design information, such as CAD data and BOMS, there is currently little support for teams in the capture and communication of the informal and tacit information exchanged, often intensively, in design meetings and other non-computational based activity. The challenge facing organisations is to easily capture this information and knowledge for re-use within the life cycle of the project or for future projects without inhibiting either the designer or the design process. This paper introduces an information capture system architecture and highlights how the system can be of significant benefit when providing design teams with information and knowledge support within distributed design environments. The overall aim is to provide design teams with pertinent information, past examples and possible solutions to the design problem irrespective of their location, providing greater efficiency and more sustainable approaches to engineering by improving the through-life support. Current and future work in this regard is outlined.