The Creative Engineering Design Cycle
The Creative Engineering Design Cycle is a series of steps used by engineers to guide them with their initial problems. It consists of a number of steps, generally including:
Brainstorming
Designing
Analyzing
Building
Testing
Where by the end of the process, one may review the final solution and propose new additions or an entirely new idea; back to the brainstorming step, in a circuitous manner.
Brainstorming
Designing
Analyzing
Building
Testing
Where by the end of the process, one may review the final solution and propose new additions or an entirely new idea; back to the brainstorming step, in a circuitous manner.
First, we identified our need. We went through a few; melting of the glacial ice, decreasing biodiversity, endangering of animals (especially Polar bears), but eventually settled on a more local need: pipelines rupturing during earthquakes. And since we live directly along the San Andreas fault, a major fault line running the length of California, it seemed a very relevant topic to explore.
Since pipelines were breaking due to natural processes like ground displacement and liquefaction, we assumed that nothing we could do to the land surrounding the pipes would be of much use. Instead, we researched and listed different possible materials the pipes could be made of to reduce the chance of them breaking during a large earthquake, and we included factors such as price, flexibility, durability, etc in charts to compare them. From these charts, we identified our most likely candidate, highlighting "flexible gooseneck" and "Wardflex" as viable examples, as the materials are unlikely to kink or rupture no matter which way they are bent.
Since pipelines were breaking due to natural processes like ground displacement and liquefaction, we assumed that nothing we could do to the land surrounding the pipes would be of much use. Instead, we researched and listed different possible materials the pipes could be made of to reduce the chance of them breaking during a large earthquake, and we included factors such as price, flexibility, durability, etc in charts to compare them. From these charts, we identified our most likely candidate, highlighting "flexible gooseneck" and "Wardflex" as viable examples, as the materials are unlikely to kink or rupture no matter which way they are bent.
Overall, this project went pretty well. It did a fantastic job at stressing the engineering design cycle and really making us think creatively and intelligently. Rather than just swallowing any concepts handed to us, we were forced to actually apply the concepts to our projects in a realistic manner. I think that we could have worked more efficiently in the beginning, and perhaps collaborated a little better, but all in all this project was a success. We learned a lot about the actual subject of our project, earthquakes and pipelines, and we also learned a lot about our thinking cycle and improved it.