Aircraft Design as a Tool in Achieving Educational Objectives for Engineering Concepts in a Core Curriculum

Cummings, Russell M.; Reed, Shad; Rolling, August J.; Brandt, Steven A.

doi:10.2514/6.2016-0537

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…They noted that traditional teaching practices could be extended to the virtual environment, which indicates that digitalized education practices may offer a feasible alternative to the classroom environment (especially in some circumstances such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic), albeit not leading to any revolutionary paradigm shift. Cummings et al [8] discussed how teaching aircraft design might offer a unique opportunity for introducing students to some of the key concepts pertaining to the field of optimization, such as "design space," "constraint equations," and so on. To this end, however, to the best of the authors' knowledge, most aircraft design courses rely on simplified equations that were statistically derived from historical data of aircraft, even when used along with more modern (i.e., computer-based) platforms.…”

Section: Educational Approaches To Aerospace Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In summary, AeroFuse distinguishes itself from other commonly used software by offering an open source, multidisciplinary aircraft design computational environment written in a single programming language (Julia) with a simple application programming interface (API). Its documentation is also accessible online, 8 which provides tutorials, theory, and implementation details for reference. All of this enables students to implement course content in a programming language with a gentler learning curve.…”

Section: B Implementation Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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MADE: A Multidisciplinary Computational Framework for Aerospace Engineering Education

2023

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Contribution: A multidisciplinary computational framework to support undergraduate engineering education is introduced. It is posed as an open-source tool that students can use to understand and apply computational methods commonly required in engineering problems.Background: This framework development is motivated by past experiences of teaching courses as segregated disciplines within an aerospace engineering curriculum. Reviewing pedagogical approaches shows that current university practices do not adequately emphasize or demonstrate the importance of interdisciplinary relationships. This framework is also motivated by the apparent need for engineering graduates to study these relationships by learning computational engineering via programming, in which proficiency is becoming increasingly important for their future careers.Intended Outcomes: 1) To effectively teach multidisciplinary engineering concepts to students via the integration of crossdisciplinary content from various courses and 2) To improve computational and programming literacy among undergraduate students in engineering studies.Application Design: A multidisciplinary design optimization approach is adopted to develop a framework called Multidisciplinary Aircraft Design Education (MADE), which provides functionalities for studying engineering disciplines within a computational programming environment. MADE makes the related course contents more accessible and intuitive to students by using reactive computational notebooks in lectures, tutorials, and assignments.Findings: MADE is assessed based on the learning outcomes and feedback from undergraduate students of two courses within an aerospace engineering curriculum. These assessments indicate an improved understanding of multidisciplinary concepts and their applications via computational programming, as reflected in the positive responses from the students.

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Section: Educational Approaches To Aerospace Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: B Implementation Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%