Effective practices for the concept design of electromechanical systems

Abstract

General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms There are a number of well-known tools and methods acknowledged as useful in facilitating concept designing, that is, to assist idea generation, aid evaluation and final selection of one winning concept from many. Combinations of these popular concept design tools and methods provide various systematic methodologies by which practitioners propose to conduct or teach concept designing. In this paper, effective practices and trends are observed through the application of a specific concept design methodology over a range of different projects in electromechanical systems design. Design/methodology/approachThe concept design methodology utilised in this study has been developed through the adoption of various tools and methods shown to be beneficial to concept designing, supported by previous positive experiences and successful utilisation associated with electromechanical systems research projects in academia. Each stage of the methodology is discussed and six case studies are presented, which are used to explore effective practices for concept designing. FindingsAnalysis of the case study data reveals the most popular criteria for the selection of concepts in electromechanical systems design, the number of selection criteria and number of initial concepts ideally required to converge on a final winning concept more efficiently, that is without the need for a more detailed second stage of selection using performance metrics Originality/valueRarely are detailed studies undertaken in concept design, first, to address the justification for the concept design methodology adopted and, second, to show how effective practices emerge through the analysis of non-subjective data over a number of concept design projects. Although the paper uses only six case studies in electromechanical systems design, it is hoped that the approach presented promotes the possible future development of a framework for verification of concept design methodologies across different products, sectors and user groups.

Abstraction framework to support students in learning creative conceptual design

“…Unfortunately, it is acknowledged that methods from academia are not widely diffused in the industry (Araujo and Benedetto-Neto, 1996;Birkhofer and Kloberdanz, 2005;Eder, 1998;Frost, 1999;Geis et al, 2008;Jagtap et al, 2014;Maurer and Widmann, 2012), but the reasons about this lack have not been comprehensively identified. Moreover, no standard or universally adopted conceptual design methods exist in practice (Booker, 2016). Therefore, it is difficult to convince students that methods can be useful, also because some past successful products have been developed without them (Geis et al, 2008).…”

Design and study on the leveling mechanism of the tractor body in hilly and mountainous areas

“…The combined factors, the servo motor and the stepper motor can be selected to the designed leveling system in this paper. Comparing the performance of the two motors, the control accuracy of servo motors is mainly determined directly by the pulses emitted by the encoder, which is more accurate, faster and has a shorter response time than stepper motors (Booker et al , 2016). Stepper motors are prone to low-frequency vibration at low speeds; the output torque decreases as the speed increases, and they do not have overload capability.…”

Modelling Green VTOL Concept Designs for Reliability and Efficiency

“…Figure 2 shows a Pareto Chart combining the important figures of merit from six case studies in electro-mechanical system design [38], with the prominence of reliability (combined with safety) and efficiency indicated. Robustness and specific geometric/performance figures of merit are difficult to quantify at system conceptualization stages, and do The current industry standard is based around three phase electrical drive technologies.…”