Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design

A team design project from client brief to tested prototype: team charter and design process, requirements and the house of quality, concept generation and selection, embodiment, DFMA and tolerancing, detailed analysis, materials and processes, FMEA and machinery safety, prototyping and designed experiments, schedule, budget and earned value, sustainability, ethics and professional practice, and the final report, following a team that designs a portable flood-response pump skid with a pump manufacturer in Moncton.

MEC-499 Year 4 3 credits 12 lessons · 4 h 19 min ▶ Video lessons coming soon

Offered by HSM University · Mechanical Engineering

This is the Canadian version of this course. See the American version.

What you'll learn

Organize a capstone team with a charter, roles and decision rules, follow a gated design process, and check the plan against usable capacity with three-point estimates.
Gather needs from stakeholders, translate them into measurable, verifiable requirements with a house of quality, and maintain traceability.
Generate a wide range of concepts using functional decomposition, benchmarking, brainstorming, morphological charts and contradiction-solving principles.
Select a concept with Pugh and weighted decision matrices, test the decision's sensitivity to weights and missing criteria, and record it.
Develop an embodiment layout with a mass budget, apply design for manufacture and assembly, and analyse tolerance stacks with worst-case and statistical methods and GD&T.
Plan and carry out detailed analyses tied to requirements at risk, including pump and system curves, NPSH, frame strength, weld fatigue and vibration isolation.
Select materials and manufacturing processes with performance indices, cost models and the real service environment, recognizing trade-offs such as mass against sound insulation.
Identify and reduce product risks with FMEA, action priority and a machinery risk assessment, applying the hierarchy of risk reduction and the designer's duty to warn.
Plan and run prototype tests, including a factorial experiment, measure performance and noise correctly, and respond honestly to a failed requirement.
Manage a project with a work breakdown structure, critical path, visible buffer, budget, earned value and change control.
Assess a design's life-cycle impacts, resolve an ethical problem through proper channels, and explain licensure, accreditation and intellectual property in Canada.
Verify a design against its requirements, write a report and presentation for their readers, hand over the work, and reflect on professional learning.

Course content

12 lessons · 4 h 19 min total · final exam

1 The capstone project and the engineering design process 23 min · quiz
2 Client needs, requirements and specifications 23 min · quiz
3 Concept generation 21 min · quiz
4 Concept selection 20 min · quiz
5 Embodiment design, manufacturability and tolerancing 22 min · quiz
6 Detailed design and analysis 24 min · quiz
7 Materials and manufacturing process selection 20 min · quiz
8 Risk, failure modes and safety 22 min · quiz
9 Prototyping and testing 21 min · quiz
10 Project management, schedule and budget 20 min · quiz
11 Sustainability, ethics and professional practice 20 min · quiz
12 The final report, presentation and reflection 23 min · quiz
E Final exam 20 questions

Requirements

MEC-360 Machine Design

Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.

Description

Part of the Engineering stream, typically taken in year 4.