MSE 5090: Case Studies in Material Selection

Week 10 - Review of Course Structure and Topical Interconnections

1.    Course premises:

Human intelligence evolved through natural selection in terrestrial environments. It works best with rounded shapes, approximate information, and a limited number of variables at a time. This is not the case with modern technology. Modern technology works with artificial shapes, multiple interacting processes controlled to exacting standards, well controlled interactions, and many constraints.

In the real-world the amount of information that needs to be processed often overwhelms individual capabilities to process it. Case studies, and its computer manifestation, Case Based Reasoning, have evolved as a superior way to handle complex multivariable problems where the information and even the probabilities are not fully known a priori.

For engineering case studies, the goal is critically assessing real world cases by linking actual outcomes to relevant design intentions and decisions based on limited information. In this manner the student will develop skills in critical thinking about materials technology and appreciate the real world context in which engineering occurs and how that will constrain design and even research choices.
 

The course, in addition to teaching real world decision processes, also operates under the following constraints:
1. It is to serve as a capstone technical design course linking all types of materials and materials processing technologies ;
2. It is to serve as a "writing emphasis" course which enhances skills in written and in verbal communication;
3. It is to serve as a replacement for the economics course. That course was eliminated in the semester conversion;
4. The course is to include an emphasis on computers in our curriculum;
5. It is to serve to introduce a number of professionalism topics to the students;
6. It is to serve as a major focus for the materials engineering aspects of our curriculum. Indeed, it is one of the very few pure materials engineering courses in our curriculum.

1.    Course Orientation.

In the real world a product development process entails many activities. The figure 1 shown below indicates the axes upon which the body of the course is plotted. A detailed description of the various functions required in product or process development is given in attached Figure 2, taken from the US Navy Best Practices Program, itself a distillation of Best Practices of major corporations. A statistical review of determinants of new product success is shown in Figure 3 below. It is seen that, while product uniqueness and superiority (the determination of which may well require marketing and management inputs) is the highest single correlating factor, other factors in total are more significant.

Therefore, in order to serve our students and provide them a meaningful and accurate model of the real world context in which most of them will be working, the factors noted above need to be included in their case studies. In view of the constraints on the course and the premises (that the case study approach is the best way to handle problems that exceeds individual grasp and which aren't amenable to direct mathematical models), the course was substantially changed this semester. The ways this was done is described below.

In addition, the three axes are integrated in the context of modern web based instruction. The enclosed notes are copies of the web page notes provided for the course. The web page is at www.eng.utah.edu/~ma5090.

Thus the new features for this semester, comprising well over half the class, consist of the following:

1. Development of a detailed, weekly set of notes on the web.
2. Homework submitted and graded via the web
3. Use of new ASM Handbook on Materials selection as a co-text concerning materials engineering
4. Enhance use of new Case Study material
5. Organization which focuses student effort on reviewing and writing case studies

A schematic representation of the approach used in this course is given in Figures 4-6 below. Figure 4 shows the link between design and materials and process selection. Since this course is a design course, it is important to specifically relate the selection of materials and processes to the design and manufacture of products. The  right hand part of figure 4 is further detailed in Figure 5below. The top part of the figure depicts the inter-relatedness of design, processing and properties. The bottom part the figure is a very important part of the course. It describes how problems are set up . The problem statement sets the "solution space" , which tells the engineer the type of problem being solved or model used. From this , the design objectives are used to develop objective functions to be maximized (or minimized).

Case studies are needed in precisely those problems that an engineer is most likely to encounter in the real world. Namely , those where there are many variables , incompletely known. In week 10 a simple optimization problem that can be solved mathematically will be presented. The constraints define the particular solutions possible to a given objective function. From the combination of objective and constraints the performance indices used to optimize materials and process selection are obtained and used, in the case of  Ashby charts , to graphically optimize the selection of materials and processes. When the data bases or data is unavailable for solution by the software , spreadsheet techniques are very helpful and are used for final selection amongst those materials and processes that pass the screening criteria set by the performance indices.

However , even this formalism isn't enough in real life problem solving. The problem is usually that the problem is overconstrained by the customer (i.e. wouldn't it be nice to have a strong , tough,  light , cheap , disposable material which can be made with zero tolerances and surface roughness and reconfigured on a days' notice etc.) . Thus the design process is usually iterative, as depicted in Figure 6. The upper figure is used for components and the lower part of the figure depicts the flow of a design from concept to prototype. The outcome of this iterative process, the detailed design, then enters the product realization process shown in Figure 2, thus bringing the entire design process full circle. Understanding this design to production , marketing , and support cycle is probably the most useful real world outcome a student can glean from this course and , based on feedback from students who have taken this course earlier, a perspective  that will serve you in good stead throughout your career.

What follows directly below is a roadmap of this course. It shows how the themes of detailed case studies, materials and process selection, and the integration of selection in design are being  interwoven in this course.  It is seen that the early part of the course focused on Axis two and three in an effort to orient you  to your detailed  case studies as early as possible in the semester. Below that are the figures mentioned in the text above.

MSE 5090: Case Studies in Materials Selection: Course Roadmap-
the three categories of courseware
 

Materials in Design	Selection Formalism	Case Studies
Main Source: Dieter, G. ASM Handbook v.20 Materials Selection and Design , 1997	Main Source: Ashby, H Materials Selection in Mechanical Design 1992 and CMS software, Materials and Process Selection	Sources: Harvard Business School, Journal Publications and previous classes, seven case studies given to students for review
Materials Engineering and the design process - week 1		Case Study Criteria - on the web page
Data Quality - Week 2
The Materials Selection Process - Week 3		Presentation skills material on net
	Materials Property Charts - Week 4, software plus text	Examples of Good Case Study introductions -on net
	Performance Index definition and derivation- text +ASM- Week 5
	Case Studies in the use of Property charts -software + text Week 6	Case study background, on net
	Selection case studies, design requirements and constraints Week 7 Text +software
	Process Selection Procedures - text +software +ASM- Week 8	Case Study of Snowboard materials-UU
Value Analysis and selection optimization - Week 9	Process Selection examples, forces for change - Week 9	Case Study of Low Cost Eyeglasses - Week 9
Tradeoff Analysis - ASM Week 10	Materials and Process Selection Capstone examples - Software	Case Study of Ice Axe Materials-UU
Manufacturing Aspects of Design - Week 11		Case Study on Materials Selection for Chemical Process industries-UU
Process Modeling - ASM Handbook -Week 12		Case Study of Titanium Matrix composite fabrication
	CMS case studies of multi- stage selection - Week 13	Case Study of shuttle Main Engine Failure -ASM
Life Cycle Costing and Environmental Criteria- ASM - Week 14		Case Study of Chaparral Steel rapid product and process development - HBS
Comparison of theory and real world - Week 15		Case Study of Aerospace Corporation Research Strategy selection - HBS

FIG 3. FACTORS DETERMINING NEW PRODUCT SUCCESS