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Software for Materials Evaluation Abstract

Multi-disciplinary team projects are an important element in the ABET accreditation of engineering programs. The basic manufacturing processes course in the Industrial Engineering Program at West Virginia University is one of the courses used to meet the multi-disciplinary team requirement with teams of industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, and other engineering disciplines working on a design project with strength and deflection requirements considering different materials and shapes. A software program was developed to assist the students to determine the costs involved in selecting a material and shape to meet specific load and deflection requirements. This software utilized Microsoft Excel® and Visual Basic® Macro’s for performing the calculations to determine the product costs.

Introduction

The basic manufacturing processes course, taken in the junior year, was selected as one of two courses with multi-disciplinary student team projects to meet this element of the ABET accreditation. The course is required in the Industrial Engineering program, the Mechanical Engineering program, and the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering dual major program, and over 50 percent of the students are non-industrial engineers. The lecture course is only two credits, so only a few class periods can be devoted to the project. The teams require that at least two different majors are represented on each team when formed, and the team size typically varies from two to five students.

The project starts with a design problem, such as the support beams for a cantilever deck, the rungs for a ladder or a footbridge across a small stream. The problem has a load requirement, either as a single load (center or end load) or as a uniform load, a deflection requirement, and weight requirement to avoid penalty costs. The students are to evaluate different structure shapes, such as a square, rectangle, circle, hollow box, hollow circle, I-beam, and etc. to minimize the overall cost (material cost + processing cost + penalty cost). In addition, the students evaluate 10 different materials provided in the program and they must select and insert an additional material for evaluation. The program determines a design parameter based upon the student inputs and calculates the cross-sectional area, volume, material cost, penalty cost, processing cost, and total cost.

The calculations are demonstrated manually in the class with notes to show the students how the analysis is performed for two materials on a simple square shape and the process is illustrated in

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Creese, R., & Gupta, D. (2007, June), Software For Materials Evaluation Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--1841