(382h) Process Design Approaches for Seniors

The problem for senior design is to deveop imagination and an independent mode of thinking as well as competence in simulation. Thus , there is a trade off between skill in simulation and design simulation. A recent design course showed that the independent mindset can be limited by challenges in detailed simulation. The result is that to some extent the students demonstrated that they can be confident but wrong. Indeed,sometimes professors at other universities can be equally confident but wrong as well.A group aasigned in a project derived the balance equation in the separation of a column and confused the transfer operation  by a factor of 5 in the height of the column. In spite of the instruction of the correct height of the column  to the group, the students simply ignored the advice and proceeded along with the incorrect design. They simply relied on the opinions of the group without following up or pursuing further questioning of the instructor. Several design instructors at other unversities confused the units and conversion factors in the contest problems. A suggestion to the students was that in the future, you should not ignore the engineering supervisor. Just because the simulations computes a result, it is not always correct. An caution is GiGo.