This thesis explores the benefits of using Building Information Modeling (BIM) during the programming and conceptual design phase of a project. The research was based on a case study undertaken dealing with the decisions and assumptions made during the design phases of the Center for Science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The project team used a traditional approach to project plan development. The finding of this study was that the project process would have greatly benefited utilizing BIM tools and a collaborative team approach in the programming and conceptual design phase. Because decisions made early in the project have enormous implications to aesthetics and cost, the increase in analysis of design options afforded by the use of BIM tools would have minimized inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable information, and allowed the design team to work in a more efficient, collaborative manner transmitting through all phases of the project.

During sea rescue operations it is common for the rescue vessels to operate in water with high number of debris that can get stuck in the propulsor. In particular plastic ropes that can get tangled around the shaft and melt causing a complete stop or damage the motor. Currently rim driven shaft-less thrusters have proven to deal with debris in a better way than conventional motors, but they usually operate only at low speeds. The Swedish Sea Rescue Society along with Rolls-Royce and other partners such as Marna decided to start developing a motor combining the idea of the rim driven thrusters driven by a Permanent magnet motor and a water jet to increase the thrust. In this thesis a conceptual design for this motor is presented, in which bearings and seals have been chosen from standard components as well as the bolts and other components, and all the housing has been designed. In order to design the housing and choose the standard components, three main factors were taken into account: not using extra systems, modularity and being as compact as possible. By focusing on those three requirements different bearing and seals solutions were studied and analyzed to check their viability. Furthermore, in order to verify the design and components chosen, mathematical models through MATLAB and simulations with ANSYS were carried out. Finally the drawings of the non standard components were added including the tolerances defined by the standard components. / Under räddningsuppdrag är det vanligt att räddningsbåtar opererar i vatten med mycket skräp som kan sugas in i propulsorn. Speciellt plastrep kan trassla in sig runt axeln och smälta och orsaka driftstopp eller skada motorn. För närvarande finns periferi-drivna, axellösa propulsorer som har visat sig hantera skräp på ett bättre sätt än konventionella, men de är vanligen bara designade för låga farter. Sjöräddningssällskapet beslutade sig därför tillsammans med Rolls-Royce och andra partners som Marna att börja utveckla en motor som kombinerar en periferidriven propulsor med en vattenjet I detta arbete presenteras en konceptuell design för denna motor, där lager och tätningar såväl som bultar och andra komponenter har valts från standardkomponenter. För att utforma höljet och välja standardkomponenterna beaktades tre huvudfaktorer: att undvika extra system, modularitet och att vara så kompakt som möjligt. Genom att fokusera på dessa tre krav studerades och analyserades olika lager- och tätningslösningar. För att kontollera designen och komponenterna som valts genomfördes dessutom matematiska analyser med hjälp av Matlab och simuleringar med ANSYS. Slutligen togs ritningar av icke-standardkomponenter fram, inklusive toleranser definierade av standardkomponenterna.

Studies have shown that 70 – 80% of a product's life cycle costs are committed by the end of the product design phase (Anderson, 2014; National Research Council, 1991; Swift, 1987). This supports the general claim that decision making in the conceptual stage drives the cost throughout the life cycle. The use of concurrent engineering has been viewed as the answer to this problem, offering the Design for Excellence (DFX) as one approach for evaluating product designs across specific disciplines. This research focuses on a subset of DFX referred to as Design for Manufacturability to develop a means to assess manufacturing risk and cost impacts in the conceptual design phase while exploring some of the challenges associated with its implementation. First, the use of design for manufacturing methods typically occurs late in the design phase, where the detection of product deficiencies increases life cycle costs as teams work to mitigate the impacts to cost, quality, and production implementation schedules. Second, implementing methods and tools in the conceptual stage involves the need for decision-making at a point where the least amount of design and manufacturing information is available. Lastly, implementation of new methods requires a commitment of time for personnel to gain the familiarity needed to effectively use these methods to benefit product development activities. In response to this problem, this research introduces the House of Manufacturability (HOM) assessment method, heavily influenced by the House of Quality. This research synthesizes the results of a comprehensive literature review and the insight gained from a stakeholder evaluation involving individuals from the product development community to develop an early life cycle manufacturability assessment. The proposed HOM method utilizes an assessment matrix of manufacturability indicators (MIs) and stakeholder requirements (SRs) to arrive at manufacturability risk numbers (MRNs) that represent the concerns of the manufacturing enterprise. A pilot case study of a notional UAV design concept is explored to illustrate the application of the method and capture observations critical to the research. The results of the case study are compared to the stakeholder input to confirm alignment with the stakeholders’ expectations.

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One of the most important decisions in the product development process is the selection of a promising design concept because of the large influence it has on the final product. A thorough search for the best design is a significant challenge to designers, who are trying to balance the objective and subjective performance of the designs they create. In this thesis, a computationally-assisted design methodology is developed and used in the early stages of design to more thoroughly search for designs that perform well according to objective physics-based models and subjective designer-specific preference-based models. The method presented herein uses an initial pool of user-created designs that is parameterized and used in a numerical search that recombines design features to form new designs in a semi-automated way. Designs are then evaluated quantitatively by objective performance calculations and evaluated qualitatively by human designers. Designer preference is interactively gathered when visual representations of new computer-created designs are presented to the designer for subjective evaluation. A mathematical model is then formed using statistical probability methods to approximate the designer's preference and incrementally updated after the designer subjectively evaluates a new set of designs at each iteration of the automated search process. The methodology uses a multiobjective approach to search for optimally performing designs, treating both the physics-based models and the preference-based models as objectives. The methodology couples the speed of computational searches with the ability of human designers to subjectively evaluate unmodeled objectives. The method is demonstrated with two product examples to find optimal designs that designers may not have otherwise discovered among the vast number of possible combinations of features. The proposed methodology brings the ability to search for and find numerous, optimal solutions across a wide solution space, in an efficient and human-centered way, and does so in the early stages of design.

This thesis is the product of an effort to develop a CubeSat Conceptual Design Tool for the California Polytechnic State University CubeSat Laboratory. Such a tool is necessary due to inefficiencies with the current conceptual design process. It is being developed to increase accessibility, reduce design time, and promote good systems engineering within CubeSat development. The development of the architecture of a conceptual design tool, the core user-interface element, and the completion of a module for the electrical power subsystem is the focus of this thesis. The architecture is built around different modules to design different subsystems that work in conjunction. The module in the tool was developed to allow a user to size an electrical power subsystem, and that is the basis for future subsystem development. Model-based Systems Engineering was also utilized as an endpoint for the tool’s outputs, and a CubeSat Model has been built for this effort. Validation has been successful on the Conceptual Design Tool as implemented at this time, so the tool it is ready to design CubeSat electrical power subsystems and be expanded upon by other tool developers.

Northvolt has an internal mobile application called the Factory App. The digitalization team at Northvolt initiated the idea that widgets could be used for the Factory App as a tool to give the users information at a glance. The Factory App is mainly used by people working with the manufacturing process. To provide information at a glance, an investigation of what type of information is relevant for different users needed to be conducted. Further, a design concept of widgets for the Factory App would also need to be created. This research aimed to approach this with the method participatory design. Part of the participatory design is the following steps: semi-structured interviews with a virtual smartphone as a prop, a design workshop where the participants among other things sketched designs of widgets, high-fidelity prototyping, and a user evaluation survey. The interview result showed that machine metrics were relevant data for six out of ten participants and that metrics were important for most participants. The outcome of the study was ten design prototypes of widgets that were created based on the interview results, the workshop results, and the design of other internal digital tools at Northvolt. This research concludes that widgets based on the provided design concept can help give relevant and instant information to people with specific positions at Northvolt. / Northvolt har en intern mobilapplikation som heter Factory App. Digitaliseringsteamet på Northvolt initierade idén att så kallade widgets skulle kunna användas som ett verktyg för att ge användarna av applikationen information i ett ögonkast. Factory-appen används främst av personer som arbetar med tillverkningsprocessen på Northvolt. För att ge information i ett ögonkast behövde en utredning göras av vilken typ av information som är relevant för olika användare. Vidare skulle ett designkoncept av widgets för Factory-appen också behövas. Denna forskning syftade till att anta sig detta med den så kallade metoden Participatory Design. De olika stegen av Participatory Design som utfördes är som följer: semistrukturerade intervjuer med en virtuell smartphone som rekvisita, en designworkshop där deltagarna bland annat skissade på design av widgets, prototypande av hög fidelity och en utvärderande användarundersökning. Intervjuresultatet visade att maskinmätningar var relevanta data för sex av tio deltagare och att mätvärden var viktiga för de flesta deltagare. Resultatet av studien var tio designprototyper av widgets som skapades utifrån intervjuresultaten, workshopresultaten och designen av andra interna digitala verktyg på Northvolt. Denna forskning drar slutsatsen att widgets baserade på det tillhandahållna designkonceptet kan hjälpa till att ge relevant och omedelbar information till personer med specifika positioner på Northvolt.

A comparative study is carried out to investigate the most promising route towardsthe lightweight construction of a retractable mast for a sailing cargo vessel.Four design families are developed and compared. The primary criteria forjudgment are the structural mass, strength, and stiffness in relation to a providedbenchmark design. Additional evaluation criteria are the capital costsfor raw materials and manufacturing.The design space includes isotropic materials as well as fiber-reinforced polymer(FRP) solutions and is navigated by employing analytical evaluation methodssupported by finite element analysis (FEA). Restrictions to the designspace are given by a general arrangement of the benchmark design. This includesthe limitation to the ULS loads and the overall mast geometry.A review of relevant Det Norske Veritas (DNV) rules for classification is performedand the guidelines for wind turbine blades and wind-powered units(WPU) are judged most suitable to the design challenge. Relevant design principlesare implemented in the structural analysis.It is concluded that pure metal constructions imply an unreasonably large weightpenalty. Local buckling is found to disqualify FRP single-skin solutions as successfulcandidates. Secondary to that, strength concerns are the major driversfor the structural mass.The report presents two designs that are judged fit for the purpose, one is ahybrid truss structure from high strength low alloy steel (HSLA steel) and carbonfiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP). The second design is a sandwich constructionwith CFRP face sheets, a PVC foam core, and additional stiffeningmembers in steel.

The primary objectives of this work are two-fold. First, additive manufacturing (AM) and rapid prototype (RP) testing are evaluated for use in production of a wind tunnel (WT) models. Second, an approach was developed to incorporate stability and control (SandC) WT data into aircraft conceptual design multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). Both objectives are evaluated in terms of data quality, time, and cost. FDM(TM) and PolyJet AM processes were used for model production at low cost and time. Several models from a representative tailless configuration, ICE 101, were printed and evaluated for strength, cost and time of production. Furthermore, a NACA 0012 model with 20% chord flap was manufactured. Both models were tested in the Virginia Tech (VT) Open-Jet WT for force and moment acquisition. A 1/15th scale ICE 101 model was prepared for manufacturing, but limits of FDM(TM) technology were identified for production. An approach using WT data was adapted from traditional surrogate-based optimization (SBO), which uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for data generation. Split-plot experimental designs were developed for analysis of the WT SBO strategy using historical data and for WT testing of the NACA 0012. Limitations of the VT Open-Jet WT resulted in a process that was not fully effective for a MDO environment. However, resolution of ICE 101 AM challenges and higher quality data from a closed-section WT should result in a fully effective approach to incorporate AM and RP testing in an aircraft conceptual design MDO. / Master of Science

This research integrates a multi-attribute decision-support tool, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), with a customer-focused design methodology, Quality Function Deployment (QFD). The result is a hybrid methodology more complete than either of the two alone, involving synthesis, analysis, and evaluation activities necessary for completing conceptual system design. An indicator was developed for the overall performance of an organization's product and its competitors’ products using the information in a QFD matrix. In addition, a methodology was developed to determine if essential customer requirements and design-dependent parameters (DDPs) have been adequately identified in the QFD matrix. A mathematical relationship was developed which relates technical and competitive assessments in the QFD matrix and helps test for inconsistencies. Finally, an indicator was developed to assess a new product concept for viability in the marketplace and to be used for accomplishing trade-off analyses. Examples are presented throughout this document to further illustrate the concepts. This research is unique in its application. It adds to the body of knowledge for decision-making in the conceptual design phase of the systems engineering process. / Master of Science