Effective Methods of Teaching MachineDesign Course:

E-Learning an Overview

General:Mechanical engineering is one of the largest, broadest, and oldestengineering disciplines. Mechanical engineers design and manufacturemachines and devices of all types. They create the processes andsystems that drive technology and industry. Design is one of the mostsatisfying jobs for a mechanical engineer and involves a lot of decisionmaking process. To design and build a new car, you must reckon withpower, weight, size and shape, materials, reliability, and safety."Synthesis" is when you pull all the factors together in a design thatcan be successfully manufactured. Design problems are challengingbecause most are open-ended, with many possible solutions.

Many CEO’s and HRD personnel of corporates such as Infosys, Wipro,TCS, L&T and others have remarked in media publications that thepresent day Graduates are unemployable directly in the industries andrequire prolonged training in spite of their good grades. This isespecially the case of design engineers without whom innovation anddevelopment of new products cannot take place.

Professional industrial design.

Professional engineering is concerned with obtaining solutions to reallife practical problems. The mechanical engineering design is a majorsegment of engineering. It deals with conception, design anddevelopment, refinement and application of machines as well asmechanical apparatus of all kinds. The basic concern is creativity andintelligent application of all related sciences to real life situations.Moreover, the engineering process of solving problems often highlightsan area of particular importance for more intensive scientific

research. It emphasizes design and synthesis as well as an analysis.Industrial design makes use of special soft wares for design.

What Is Expected In Teaching Machine Design?Mechanical engineering design course is their first exposure formechanical engineering students to professional / practicalengineering in any industry. The machine design course presentsmechanical engineering students with design challenges rather than aset of routine problems. Normally the type of design addressed in thiscourse is that of a detailed design which is only one part of the entiredesign process spectrum. In detailed design, the general concept,application and even general shape of the required device are typicallyknown at the outset. It should be emphasized here that only limitedinformation is available in a practical industrial problem and thedesigner’s experience, creativity and matured decision-makingprocess are essential to solve the problems. Moreover, multiplesolutions exist that meet all requirements in such a situation.However, the determination of the best or optimum solution is tedious.Iterations or cut-and-try techniques among the fundamental elementsof the design process are the establishment of the objectives andcriteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing and evaluation. It isimportant that rational method of design is understood by engineers toenable them to manage their task when confronted with vast inputinformation.

Problems in the Present Day Teaching Methods:It is important to introduce to engineering students of design,professional studies which integrate tools and sciences in theaccomplishment of an engineering objective. The pressures uponundergraduate crowded curricula today require that it must be done inan efficient manner within available time. Studies in mechanicaldesign seem to be the most effective method of starting a student inthe practice of mechanical engineering. A traditional approach toteaching of the machine design course in all universities and collegeshave been to emphasize design of individual machine parts orelements such as gears, springs, shafts, bearings etc. One criticism

that is directed at this approach is that it can become a collection ofdisparate topics and does not prepare a student to solve differentvarieties of problems. Teachers may routinely cover various elementsin the time available giving mundane details. Such an approach may dodisservice to students because it does not necessarily developfundamental understanding of practical application of underlyingtheories of design problems. Classroom and textbook problemsinvariably provide all parametric information, leaving a student to findout one missing quantity in equations of design. Although the designprocess requires all possible modes of failures to be studied and to beaccounted for safety in design, these problems do consider only onemode at a time and not all modes comprehensively in the same designproblem. A student is thus unaware of decisions made to get thoseother parameters in problems and has no scope for creativity.Moreover, time available in the crowded engineering curriculum formore practice is limited. A real way to learn the design thereforeappears to be to do design as many times.

The commonality of the analytical approaches needed to design awide variety of elements must be noted and the use of computer-aided-engineering as an approach to design and analysis must beemphasized. An access to personal computers or to programmablecalculators is now very important in mechanical design studies asthey make it possible to solve many problems quickly using numericalmethods and to perform easily repetitive computations. It is possibleto develop specific program for all the above purposes. Learning-by-doing is generally considered the most effective way to learn. TheInternet and a variety of emerging communication, visualization, andsimulation technologies now make it possible to offer students e-learning experiences ranging from experimentation to real-worldproblem solving. E-learning supports it and makes it effective and it isimportant. Whenever as possible, an actual experience in designingshould be supplemented by regular lectures. There are many practicallaboratories in engineering colleges and universities for strength ofmaterials, fluid mechanics, thermal sciences, workshops, etc., butnone for the design engineering. This is a major lacunae in theengineering education planning. A substantial amount of training isrequired to be imparted to fresh graduates for whom they have no

time. No wonder in many industries, research and developmentactivities lag behind the state-of-the-art designs, which remainproprietary items of industries from developed countries. Evencolleges and universities find it difficult to get good design teachers.One should provide for self-reliance on the part of students to learndesign independently. It should not be taught as a dry subject, butrather provide more scope for student to practice and developcreativity.

It is noteworthy that almost all universities and colleges have installedlarge number of networking computers, which are accessible tostudents in computer labs. These labs can be made best use forteaching machine design when doubled as a machine designlaboratory by using e-learning software based on entire syllabus. TheAuthor of this article has experience of 38 years of teaching machinedesign at IIT,Bombay and participated in developing one such E-learning tool which excellently serves this purpose. Those interestedcan visit the website www.feastsoftware.com. This tool has allinformation about the components, their types, their applications, theirmodes of failure and remedies as well as design & analysis, GUI whichcan be used for complete design. 2D and 3D drawings can bedeveloped which further assist in detailed Finite Element Analysis forstress analysis etc.

Methods To Improve Machine Design Teaching:1. Install e-learning soft wares on server of the computer laboratory

to be used as Machine Design Laboratory for 3 hours a week.2. .it does not cost so much as other labs to run and maintain.

(Provision must be made for this purpose in the present daycurriculum.)

3. All design problems given to the students for assignment shouldrelate to actual machine where the item to be designed ispresent and of open ended type. Teacher should explain howparameters in the problem are selected.

4. Students should be informed about method of nomenclatureadopted for material specification in Indian standards instead ofsaying Mild Steel or Alloy Steel. Students should be made awareof national and international standards.

5. Students should be given a Machine component, say Gear Boxand ask them to dissemble and reassemble to know thesequence of arrangement. Small scale working model building ofmachines can be given as competition to students.

6. Industrial visits to design departments of industries should bearranged to acquaint students of design practice adopted inindustries. Most industries have special design soft wares usedfor this purpose.

7. Students should encouraged to read many journals and goodreference books of design of design rather than only text bookslocally available.

8. E- learning develops active participation and learner takes moreresponsibility to his own learning.

9. E- learning helps student to learn at his own pace for betterunderstanding and absorption. It is available 24x7 unlike classroom teaching.

10. On line evaluation and correction are possible by teachers. 10. one word of caution PRO-E,sold works etc., are post processing drawing, modeling and simulation tools and should not be treated as machine design involving stress analysis and other decision making details. 11.Animated versions of loading,functioning and failure modes ofmachine components or structures can be prepared and shown tostudents for better understanding and absorption. “Like soft wareFatigue guru” 12.Ask students to collect information of novel ideas or design andpresent it to the class. Award prize for best collection andpresentation.

Authors Name and Address:Prof. P. Vasudevan (Retd. From IIT Bombay)Technical Director,M/s. Feast Software Pvt. Ltd.