MCEN30014: Mechanical Design

• One two-hour end-of-semester examination (40%) CLOSED BOOK
• Three assignments (projects) total of 60% -

Assignment 1 (48%) assessed tasks in weeks, 2, 4, 6 8 - approximately 40 hours work per student
Assignment 2 (6%) week 9 - 8 to 10 hours work per student
Assignment 3 (6%) week 10 - 8 to 10 hours work per student

Hurdle requirement: Students must pass all assignments and the end of semester exam in order to pass the subject.

This subject surveys 3 different things:
-Engineering design process (weeks 1-5)
-Engineering drawings (weeks 6-7)
-Structural failures (mainly fatigue and shaft design) (remainder of the weeks)
-WARMAN project

Engineering design process section is just application of common sense. It's like one of these things about "describe the advantage of a car over a motorcycle", which you can just come up by common sense without having to learn anything. Not too difficult, and actually quite interesting. Assignment 1 is all about engineering design process, which I will talk about in more detail later

In engineering drawings you go over into talking about various engineering drawing types and techniques, and you will make your own in assignment 2.

Structural failures is a survey of different failure modes and criteria of failure of a mechanical system, how to properly conduct a failure analysis; all this is applied in the context of shaft design.

Until now, it seems pretty straightforward right? Now let's talk about WARMAN, which is the worst part of this subject.

Colin wants you to get hands on and dirty in terms of engineering design process. So, you and your mates (you pick them yourselves maximum 5 people) are going to be assigned to complete a project called WARMAN, which is a Australasian engineering design competition. Every year the project changes. What you have to do is to design and BUILD a mechanical system that completes a specific required task. Just Youtube WARMAN and check out the previous year's projects.

You will have to use the engineering workshop (The huge big chocolate builiding with big glass doors nearby House of Cards) to build your system. You will have to go through a series of induction sessions, training sessions and answering a lot of online quiz questions before you can work in the workshop. It's much better to get this done before the semester starts because trying to do these sessions during the semester is hectic (the training sessions are also populated with students from masters level subjects, and there is a quota for each training session so its a first in first serve thing). To get enrolled in the workshop training sessions before the semester starts, go to your LMS, go to communities, and then search for: "MSE Workshop Tools Training". Enrol in the community and follow the instructions there.

Get your groups right; the project is not easy at all. It requires a lot of dedication, especially dedication to learn stuff that are not taught in lectures through youtube etc. You are also stuck with the group for all your assignments so get them right; the assignments are worth more than half your subject mark so your group really determines your mark.

Also before the semester starts, try to get aquinted with "Arduino", which is a PLD (like the brain for robots). In the competition, you are not allowed to control your system wirelessly/manually the system has to be able to move by itself. Therefore you need to be able to use this PLD to allow the motors etc. of your system move independently without human aid. Before the semester starts try to get an arduino and learn how to use it; you won't have time learning how to use it in the semester. Also, learn how to use Solidworks/Inventor because the final report for this project requires a CAD model of your system and so you'll need it. There are help for these stuff available from uni (in LMS under Mech eng student communities), but they are mostly just one off seminars and you don't get personalised help; you're supposed to learn about it by yourself through youtube etc.; these stuff are not taught in lectures at all. Also get aquinted with 3D printings in the workshop if you never seen them before.

Assignment 1 basically is divided into 4 parts; each parts assesses and aids your progress in the design phase of your system. The third part of the assignment is the actual test run of your team's device, which occurs in week 8(!). So yeah, you only have 2 months to design a system from scratch without any background knowledge on programming electronics or manufacturing. That's why it's very important to get yourself prepared with these things BEFORE the semester starts. Chew off some of your holiday; it will be worth it.

One more thing with WARMAN; you are expected to provide the materials for your system yourself. The engineering workshop sometimes are able to give you some scrap material but for the wheels of your system or the arduino etc. you have to buy yourself. So if you have problems financially I suggest you don't take this subject; there's a lot of trial and error and so you might spend much more money than you planned (I personally spent 100 bucks).

For assignment 3 (as well as the exam), I suggest that you revise mechanics and materials thoroughly before the semester, especially the mechanics part (Mohr's circle, Von Mises etc). He assumes you know these things already and so did not do any revision on these topics at all in the lectures.

These will be marked as tutorials in your timetable. They are not compulsory; they are rather like consultation hours for you to ask questions about WARMAN or assignment 2 and 3. They are run by post grad students.

Not too bad. Make sure you understand each examples given in the lectures as well as the books I mentioned. Do the past exams and make sure you know how to correctly do especially the shaft design stuff. There will be a final consultation session 2 days before the exam in which you can ask all these things. The questions are mostly repeating the previous year's exams, with just different devices to be analysed.

All in all, the subject is exciting and fun, provided you do your homework as i said before you walk into the subject. The WARMAN stuff really does give you an insight into teamwork and real engineering design stuff, not just calculations and theory. I don't suggest you take this subject as elective/breadth; the WARMAN project really chews off your time (you might have to sacrifice lectures or workshops for other subjects so that you can do work in the engineering workshop).

Yes with screen capture

Colin Burvill

The first few lectures were cool and exciting. I liked seeing the real life implications of engineering design procedures etc. However, as we venture into engineering drawing and structural failure, the lecturer doesn't do worked problems in the lectures; yeah he does it but half heartedly, just pointing stuff on his slides using his pointer and it gets very confusing. Nightmare for exam preparation. Therefore, for the structural failure and engineering drawing sections I suggest you study from the books I recommended above rather from lectures; the lectures exactly follow the books (the lecturer sort of co-wrote the book several years ago so the examples in the lectures are actually taken from those books).

6 past exams from 2010 onwards

2 Out of 5

Introduction to Engineering Design, Bruce W. Field
Introduction to Engineering Design, 1st Edition from Andrew Samuel, John Weir.

GET THESE BOOKS; no need to buy, just get it from the library. The Shigley book is useless; you must use these. He follows these books in the lectures; even some of the assignments were based on these books so read them.

3x1 hr lectures per week (no lectures in week 11 and 12; one exam prep lecture in week 12 though)
Optional design drop in sessions (more on this later)

2016 Sem 2

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