Montreal, Quebec, Canada
June 22, 2025
June 22, 2025
August 15, 2025
Aerospace Division (AERO) Technical Session 5 - Pedagogy & Aviation
Aerospace Division (AERO)
11
10.18260/1-2--56170
https://peer.asee.org/56170
1
Dr. Felix Ewere is the director of Aerospace Engineering capstone design at North Carolina State University. He has mentored several successful aerospace vehicle design projects, and his student teams have consistently been in the top teams in national competitions. He applies a systems engineering approach for the senior design course sequence based on NASA’s systems engineering engine and vee-model project life cycle. His research involves analytical modeling, numerical analysis, simulation and experimental approaches. He has expertise in goal-oriented design, prototype development and research to re-invent. Educational research interests include engineering design education, developing better-equipped graduates for the workforce, bridging the core competencies gap, improving diversity and collaboration within disciplines. Felix is an Associate Teaching Professor in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He has published several journals, and conference papers and holds a U.S. patent.
In this paper, we explore the ability of engineering students to create architectures for engineering concepts. The conceptual design phase of the aerospace engineering capstone senior design course at national university involves students’ teams starting with an initial sizing of the high-level system, defining the system architecture to establish the main subsystems and functional block diagram, generating concepts for the different subcomponents, and finally selecting concepts for these subsystems via a qualitative method to define an initial design. To establish an initial design, students must make connections between the function of the subcomponent and the physical form that can achieve the desired function. A concept is selected when a function is mapped to a physical form from a selection of forms that perform similar functions. To explore their ability to create architectures (functional and physical), a module is introduced at the midpoint of concept generation and selection of the design process. This module will be a precursor to using the Pugh matrix and conducting sensitivity analysis. The student teams are required to select cleaning devices from a list based on their assumptions, map function to form of the different subcomponents, create levels of abstraction and identify aspects of distinction. The teams will further apply this knowledge to define architecture for their capstone project. As an example, function and form view and one to one mapping of these architectures for the teams working on an inflatable lunar rover will be shown. Assessment rubric is via a project proposal to assess the teams and a pre and post project survey to assess individual students.
Ewere, F. (2025, June), Creating System Architectures for Engineering Concepts: An introduction to Engineering Undergraduates Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . 10.18260/1-2--56170
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