Engineering Design Education - Core Competencies

In the past, it was very common for students to come to the university to study engineering with basic design and build skills acquired through hands-on experiences acquired through play with friends, work on farms, work on cars and general tinkering. Engineering students were predominantly white males and eager to dive into design projects that could call upon skills in spatial reasoning, problem solving, working with others, and more. Currently, students who enter the university to study engineering are more diverse in race, gender, and background. The pervasiveness of computers, computer gaming, and social networking has also shifted the competencies of most incoming students. Many incoming students do not have the background and skills required to succeed in the design of solutions to engineering problems. This paper suggests there is a need to identify and better understand the basic set of core competencies that, if possessed by the student, would assure their success in the engineering education environment as well as in industry upon graduation. This paper identifies industry lists and critiques and academic efforts to catalogue core competencies and gives an example of one core competency, after being identified as being weak and remediated, showed dramatically improved student performance.This proceeding was published in the Proceedings of the 50th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition, Paper No. AIAA 2012-1222, doi:10.2514/6.2012-1222. Posted with permission.</p

Developing 3-D Spatial Visualization Skills

This article brings up the point that 3-D spatial visualization skills are vital to graphics education. Instructors of graphics education, even though they have highly advanced spatial skills, rarely have the proper training on what spatial skills are or how the development of spatial skills takes place. As a result one must try to have a better understanding of spatial abilities. There are many interpretations as to what spatial skills really are and there is in therefore no one universal definition. As a way to better understand spatial abilities, Maier places them into five categories. The categories are spatial perception, spatial visualization, mental rotations, spatial rotations, and spatial orientation. These categories are vast. As a result of their vastness many of the categories overlap. Another step towards better understanding spatial skills involves differentiating how spatial skills are used while completing a task. Tartre makes a classification for how spatial skills are used while performing a task. The spatial skills are either used as spatial visualization that involves mentally moving the object, or as spatial orientation, which involves mentally moving the object. If the task involves spatial visualization then mental rotation can take place, which involves the entire object, or mental transformation can occur, which only involves part of an object. Visual thinking is a way to understand spatial skills. McKim offers the viewpoint that visual thinking occurs by three kinds of imagery. They are what one sees, what one can imagine, and what one can draw. All of these images interact with one another. Spatial skills are developed primarily in three different stages. This can be see be Piaget's theory on development. In the first stage, two dimensional, topological, skills are acquired. In the second stage, an understanding of 3-D objects, projective skills, from different viewpoints is achieved. Finally in the third stage, there is an understanding of area, volume, distance, translation, rotation and reflection, which is combined with projective skills. Spatial skills are evaluated in a variety of ways. There are tests that assess a person's projective skill level. Examples of these would be the Mental Cutting Test and the Differential Aptitude Test: Spatial Relation. Other tests assess mental rotation. Examples of mental rotation tests are the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test and the Mental Rotation Test. Results of these evaluations show mixed results as to whether there are gender differences in spatial skills. In order to enhance spatial skills, one must not only work with 3-D images, but they must also use concrete models and sketching. Overall I thought this article was very informative. It presented the information in a clear and concise manner. I summarized the information that I thought was especially useful for this class. The article really made me think how important it is not only to have spatial skills, but also to have an understanding of them

Beta-Eutectoid Decomposition in Rapidly Solidified Titanium-Nickel Alloys

The eutectoid reaction, β → α + Ti2Ni, has been observed in as-produced rapidly solidified ribbons and flakes of hypoeutectoid and near-eutectoid beta titanium-nickel alloys prepared by chill block melt spinning (CBMS), pendant drop melt extraction (PDME), and electron beam melting/splat quenching (EBSQ) processes. Microstructural characterization of these materials was carried out by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy. The occurrence of eutectoid decomposition in the rapidly solidified alloys was attributed to the breakaway of the ribbons or flakes (while still at an elevated temperature) from the quench wheel, resulting subsequently in a lower cooling rate. Fast quenching, as obtained in the hammer-and-anvil process, resulted in a martensitic structure free from products of eutectoid decomposition. The eutectoid morphology was nonlamellar in hypoeutectoid alloy ribbons, while a hitherto unreported lamellar eutectoid was observed in the near-eutectoid ribbons and flakes. The formation of this unusual lamellar eutectoid was rationalized in terms of the predominance of allotriomorphs of alpha phase and consequent availability of sufficiently mobile and maneuverable alpha/beta interphase boundaries in the fine-grained, rapidly solidified titanium-nickel alloys