Mechanical Design, Materials Selection and Mechanics are typically taught as separate modules in a mechanical engineering undergraduate programme. The existing approaches for teaching do not provide an adequate emphasis on the connectedness of these topics and students often find it difficult to correlate these topics. In the Mechanical Design and Manufacturing Engineering (MDME) programme offered by Newcastle University (a partner university of Singapore Institute of Technology) in Singapore, an integrated approach has been developed to teach mechanical design, materials selection and mechanics to undergraduate students by combining aspects from three modules in a beam design assignment where they work together in small groups to optimize the shape of the beam based on various constraints assigned to them. To work on the assignment, students will need the knowledge from strength of materials in mechanics where they learnt simple beam theory, performed a cantilever beam laboratory experiment and compared the results with a computer simulation model using Autodesk Inventor software. They were taught materials engineering concepts and made use of CES EduPack software for material selection in the materials module, and design methodologies in the design module. In the beam design assignment, they are required to perform material selection based on a given target application (e.g. aerospace, marine, transportation, building etc), use material indices to fulfil constraints (lightweight, stiffness, strength), optimize the shape of the beam to improve mechanical efficiency and lastly to construct a small-scale model of their final design using cardboard.
