Engineering Design

Engineering Your Future: An Australasian Guide, 2nd Edition, is the ideal textbook for undergraduate students beginning their engineering studies. Building on the success of the popular 1st edition, this new edition continues the strong and practical emphasis on skills that are essential for engineering problem-solving and design. Numerous topical and locally focused examples of projects across the broad range of engineering disciplines help to graphically demonstrate the role and responsibilities of a professional engineer. Themes of sustainability, ethical practice and effective communication are constant throughout the text. In addition, its many exercises and project activities will encourage students to put key engineering principles and skills into practice.

Energy Transformed : Building Capacity in the Engineering Profession in Australia

Global pressures of burgeoning population growth and consumption are threatening efforts to reduce negative environmental pressures associated with development such as atmospheric, land and water pollution. For example, the world’s population is now growing at over 70 million per year or 1 billion per decade (Brown, 2007), increasing from 3.5 billion in 1970, to 5 billion in 1990, to 7 billion by 2010 (United Nations, 2002). In 1990 only 13 percent of the global population lived in cities, while in 2007 more than half did. More than 60 percent of the global population lives within 100 kilometers of the coastline (World Resources Institute, 2005) and nearly all of the population growth hereon is forecast to happen in developing countries (Postel, 1999). Future levels of stress on the global environment are therefore likely to increase if current trends are used for forecasting, which is particularly challenging as scientists are already observing significant signs of degradation and failure in environmental systems. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2007) provided an nequivocal link between climate change and current human activities, in particular: the burning of fossil fuels; deforestation and land clearing; the use of synthetic greenhouse gases; and decomposition of wastes from landfill. The UK Stern Review concluded that within our lifetime there is between a 77 to 99 percent chance (depending on the climate model used) of the global average temperature rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius (Stern, 2006), with a likely greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere of 550 parts per million (ppm) or more by around 2100.

Cyclone Tracy and the road to improving wind-resistant design

Early on Christmas morning 1974, tropical cyclone Tracy devastated the city of Darwin leaving only 6 per cent of the city’s housing habitable and instigating the evacuation of 75 per cent of its population. The systematic failure of so much of Darwin’s building stock led to a humanitarian disaster that proved the impetus for an upheaval of building regulatory and construction practices throughout Australia. Indeed, some of the most enduring legacies of Tracy have been the engineering and regulatory steps taken to ensure the extent of damage would not be repeated. This chapter explores these steps and highlights lessons that have led to a national building framework and practice at the fore of wind-resistant design internationally.

Infrastructure sustainability : differential axial shortening of concrete structures

High density development has been seen as a contribution to sustainable development. However, a number of engineering issues play a crucial role in the sustainable construction of high rise buildings. Non linear deformation of concrete has an adverse impact on high-rise buildings with complex geometries, due to differential axial shortening. These adverse effects are caused by time dependent behaviour resulting in volume change known as ‘shrinkage’, ‘creep’ and ‘elastic’ deformation. These three phenomena govern the behaviour and performance of all concrete elements, during and after construction. Reinforcement content, variable concrete modulus, volume to surface area ratio of the elements, environmental conditions, and construction quality and sequence influence on the performance of concrete elements and differential axial shortening will occur in all structural systems. Its detrimental effects escalate with increasing height and non vertical load paths resulting from geometric complexity. The magnitude of these effects has a significant impact on building envelopes, building services, secondary systems, and lifetime serviceability and performance. Analytical and test procedures available to quantify the magnitude of these effects are limited to a very few parameters and are not adequately rigorous to capture the complexity of true time dependent material response. With this in mind, a research project has been undertaken to develop an accurate numerical procedure to quantify the differential axial shortening of structural elements. The procedure has been successfully applied to quantify the differential axial shortening of a high rise building, and the important capabilities available in the procedure have been discussed. A new practical concept, based on the variation of vibration characteristic of structure during and after construction and used to quantify the axial shortening and assess the performance of structure, is presented.

Safety enhancement of water-filled road safety barrier using interaction of composite materials

Road safety barriers are used to redirect traffic at roadside work-zones. When filled with water, these barriers are able to withstand low to moderate impact speeds up to 50kmh-1. Despite this feature, there are challenges when using portable water-filled barriers (PWFBs) such as large lateral displacements as well as tearing and breakage during impact, especially at higher speeds. In this study, the authors explore the use of composite action to enhance the crashworthiness of PWFBs and enable their use at higher speeds. Initially, we investigated the energy absorption capability of water in PWFB. Then, we considered the composite action of a PWFB with the introduction of a steel frame to evaluate its impact on performance. Findings of the study show that the initial height of impact must be lower than the free surface level of water in a PWFB for the water to provide significant crash energy absorption. In general, impact of a road barrier that is 80% filled is a good estimation. Furthermore, the addition of a composite structure greatly reduces the probability of tearing by decreasing the strain and impact energy transferred to the shell container. This allows the water to remain longer in the barrier to absorb energy via inertial displacement and sloshing response. Information from this research will aid in the design of next generation roadside safety structures aimed to increase safety on modern roadways.

Tomorrow's Technologies

Australian research and technological solutions are now being applied throughout the world.

Considering a whole-of-community approach to integrating nature in cities, an international case study of Vauban, Germany

Globally, cities face a convergence of complex and rapidly evolving challenges, including climate change, resource shortages, population growth and urbanization, and financial pressures. Biophilic urbanism is an emerging design principle capable of considering the multidimensional and interdependent complexities of urban systems and infrastructure, which through the use of natural design features, can meet society’s inherent need for contact with nature, and assist efforts to respond to these growing challenges. Considering the imperative for addressing these challenges, this paper proposes that significant lessons can be learned from existing examples of biophilic urbanism, avoiding ‘re-invention of the wheel’ and facilitating accelerated innovation in other areas. Vauban is a 38-hectare brownfield development located 3 kilometers from the centre of Germany’s ‘ecological capital’ of Freiburg city. It was developed using an innovative process with strong community participation and reinterpreted developer roles to produce an example of integrated sustainability. Innovation in transport, energy, housing, development and water treatment has enabled a relatively high-density, mixed-use development that integrates a considerable amount of nature. This paper discusses Vauban in light of research undertaken over the last two years through the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre in Australia, to investigate emerging elements of ‘biophilic urbanism’ (nature-loving cities), and their potential to be mainstreamed within urban environments. The paper considers the interplay between the policies, community dynamics and innovations in Vauban, within the context of the culture, history and practice of sustainability in Germany, and how these have enabled nature to be integrated into the urban environment of Vauban while achieving other desirable goals for urban areas. It highlights potential applications from Vauban for Australian cities.

Life cycle modelling and design knowledge development in 3D virtual environments : final report

Experience plays an important role in building management. “How often will this asset need repair?” or “How much time is this repair going to take?” are types of questions that project and facility managers face daily in planning activities. Failure or success in developing good schedules, budgets and other project management tasks depend on the project manager's ability to obtain reliable information to be able to answer these types of questions. Young practitioners tend to rely on information that is based on regional averages and provided by publishing companies. This is in contrast to experienced project managers who tend to rely heavily on personal experience. Another aspect of building management is that many practitioners are seeking to improve available scheduling algorithms, estimating spreadsheets and other project management tools. Such “micro-scale” levels of research are important in providing the required tools for the project manager's tasks. However, even with such tools, low quality input information will produce inaccurate schedules and budgets as output. Thus, it is also important to have a broad approach to research at a more “macro-scale.” Recent trends show that the Architectural, Engineering, Construction (AEC) industry is experiencing explosive growth in its capabilities to generate and collect data. There is a great deal of valuable knowledge that can be obtained from the appropriate use of this data and therefore the need has arisen to analyse this increasing amount of available data. Data Mining can be applied as a powerful tool to extract relevant and useful information from this sea of data. Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and Data Mining (DM) are tools that allow identification of valid, useful, and previously unknown patterns so large amounts of project data may be analysed. These technologies combine techniques from machine learning, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, statistics, databases, and visualization to automatically extract concepts, interrelationships, and patterns of interest from large databases. The project involves the development of a prototype tool to support facility managers, building owners and designers. This final report presents the AIMMTM prototype system and documents how and what data mining techniques can be applied, the results of their application and the benefits gained from the system. The AIMMTM system is capable of searching for useful patterns of knowledge and correlations within the existing building maintenance data to support decision making about future maintenance operations. The application of the AIMMTM prototype system on building models and their maintenance data (supplied by industry partners) utilises various data mining algorithms and the maintenance data is analysed using interactive visual tools. The application of the AIMMTM prototype system to help in improving maintenance management and building life cycle includes: (i) data preparation and cleaning, (ii) integrating meaningful domain attributes, (iii) performing extensive data mining experiments in which visual analysis (using stacked histograms), classification and clustering techniques, associative rule mining algorithm such as “Apriori” and (iv) filtering and refining data mining results, including the potential implications of these results for improving maintenance management. Maintenance data of a variety of asset types were selected for demonstration with the aim of discovering meaningful patterns to assist facility managers in strategic planning and provide a knowledge base to help shape future requirements and design briefing. Utilising the prototype system developed here, positive and interesting results regarding patterns and structures of data have been obtained.

Life Cycle Modelling and Design Knowledge Development in 3D Virtual Environments

Experience plays an important role in building management. “How often will this asset need repair?” or “How much time is this repair going to take?” are types of questions that project and facility managers face daily in planning activities. Failure or success in developing good schedules, budgets and other project management tasks depend on the project manager's ability to obtain reliable information to be able to answer these types of questions. Young practitioners tend to rely on information that is based on regional averages and provided by publishing companies. This is in contrast to experienced project managers who tend to rely heavily on personal experience. Another aspect of building management is that many practitioners are seeking to improve available scheduling algorithms, estimating spreadsheets and other project management tools. Such “micro-scale” levels of research are important in providing the required tools for the project manager's tasks. However, even with such tools, low quality input information will produce inaccurate schedules and budgets as output. Thus, it is also important to have a broad approach to research at a more “macro-scale.” Recent trends show that the Architectural, Engineering, Construction (AEC) industry is experiencing explosive growth in its capabilities to generate and collect data. There is a great deal of valuable knowledge that can be obtained from the appropriate use of this data and therefore the need has arisen to analyse this increasing amount of available data. Data Mining can be applied as a powerful tool to extract relevant and useful information from this sea of data. Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and Data Mining (DM) are tools that allow identification of valid, useful, and previously unknown patterns so large amounts of project data may be analysed. These technologies combine techniques from machine learning, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, statistics, databases, and visualization to automatically extract concepts, interrelationships, and patterns of interest from large databases. The project involves the development of a prototype tool to support facility managers, building owners and designers. This Industry focused report presents the AIMMTM prototype system and documents how and what data mining techniques can be applied, the results of their application and the benefits gained from the system. The AIMMTM system is capable of searching for useful patterns of knowledge and correlations within the existing building maintenance data to support decision making about future maintenance operations. The application of the AIMMTM prototype system on building models and their maintenance data (supplied by industry partners) utilises various data mining algorithms and the maintenance data is analysed using interactive visual tools. The application of the AIMMTM prototype system to help in improving maintenance management and building life cycle includes: (i) data preparation and cleaning, (ii) integrating meaningful domain attributes, (iii) performing extensive data mining experiments in which visual analysis (using stacked histograms), classification and clustering techniques, associative rule mining algorithm such as “Apriori” and (iv) filtering and refining data mining results, including the potential implications of these results for improving maintenance management. Maintenance data of a variety of asset types were selected for demonstration with the aim of discovering meaningful patterns to assist facility managers in strategic planning and provide a knowledge base to help shape future requirements and design briefing. Utilising the prototype system developed here, positive and interesting results regarding patterns and structures of data have been obtained.

Teaching manufacturing engineering at tertiary institutions in conjunction with engineering design and engineering materials

Tertiary institutions now face serious challenges. Modern industry requires engineering graduates with strong knowledge of modern technologies, highly practical focus, management skills, ability to work individually and in a team, understanding of environmental issues and many other skills and graduate attributes. Institutions in the tertiary sector change courses and modify curriculum to reflect challenges of the modern industry and make engineering graduates better prepared for the “real world”. Queensland University of Technology in the recent years introduced an innovative structure of engineering courses with a common core for Bachelor of Engineering Mechanical, Infomechatronics and Medical, where manufacturing is taught in conjunction with engineering design and engineering materials. In this paper we discuss the innovative curriculum structure, teaching and learning approaches of coherent delivery of manufacturing in conjunction with engineering design and

STEM learning through engineering design: fourth-grade students' investigations in aerospace

Background: Internationally, there is a growing concern for developing STEM education to prepare students for a scientifically and technologically advanced society. Despite educational bodies lobbying for an increased focus on STEM, there is limited research on how engineering might be incorporated especially in the elementary school curriculum. A framework of five comprehensive core engineering design processes (problem scoping, idea generation, design and construction, design evaluation, redesign), adapted from the literature on design thinking in young children, served as a basis for the study. We report on a qualitative study of fourth-grade students’ developments in working an aerospace problem, which took place during the first year of a 3-year longitudinal study. Students applied design processes together with their mathematics and science knowledge to the design and redesign of a 3-D model plane. Results: The study shows that through an aerospace engineering problem, students could complete initial designs and redesigns of a model plane at varying levels of sophistication. Three levels of increasing sophistication in students’ sketches were identified in their designs and redesigns. The second level was the most prevalent involving drawings or templates of planes together with an indication of how to fold the materials as well as measurements linked to the plane’s construction. The third level incorporated written instructions and calculations. Students’ engagement with each of the framework’s design processes revealed problem scoping components in their initial designs and redesigns. Furthermore, students’ recommendations for improving their launching techniques revealed an ability to apply their mathematics knowledge in conjunction with their science learning on the forces of flight. Students’ addition of context was evident together with an awareness of constraints and a consideration of what was feasible in their design creation. Interestingly, students’ application of disciplinary knowledge occurred more frequently in the last two phases of the engineering framework (i.e., design evaluation and redesign), highlighting the need for students to reach these final phases to enable the science and mathematics ideas to emerge. Conclusions: The study supports research indicating young learners’ potential for early engineering. Students can engage in design and redesign processes, applying their STEM disciplinary knowledge in doing so. An appropriate balance is needed between teacher input of new concepts and students’ application of this learning in ways they choose. For example, scaffolding by the teacher about how to improve designs for increased detail could be included in subsequent experiences. Such input could enhance students’ application of STEM disciplinary knowledge in the redesign process. We offer our framework of design processes for younger learners as one way to approach early engineering education with respect to both the creation of rich problem experiences and the analysis of their learning.

An observational study of how objects support engineering design thinking and communication : implications for the design of tangible media

There has been an increasing interest in objects within the HCI field particularly with a view to designing tangible interfaces. However, little is known about how people make sense of objects and how objects support thinking. This paper presents a study of groups of engineers using physical objects to prototype designs, and articulates the roles that physical objects play in supporting their design thinking and communications. The study finds that design thinking is heavily dependent upon physical objects, that designers are active and opportunistic in seeking out physical props and that the interpretation and use of an object depends heavily on the activity. The paper discusses the trade-offs that designers make between speed and accuracy of models, and specificity and generality in choice of representations. Implications for design of tangible interfaces are discussed.

Technology strategy for re-engineering design and construction

Automation technology can provide construction firms with a number of competitive advantages. Technology strategy guides a firm's approach to all technology, including automation. Engineering management educators, researchers, and construction industry professionals need improved understanding of how technology affects results, and how to better target investments to improve competitive performance. A more formal approach to the concept of technology strategy can benefit the construction manager in his efforts to remain competitive in increasingly hostile markets. This paper recommends consideration of five specific dimensions of technology strategy within the overall parameters of market conditions, firm capabilities and goals, and stage of technology evolution. Examples of the application of this framework in the formulation of technology strategy are provided for CAD applications, co-ordinated positioning technology and advanced falsework and formwork mechanisation to support construction field operations. Results from this continuing line of research can assist managers in making complex and difficult decisions regarding reengineering construction processes in using new construction technology and benefit future researchers by providing new tools for analysis. Through managing technology to best suit the existing capabilities of their firm, and addressing the market forces, engineering managers can better face the increasingly competitive environment in which they operate.