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Aircraft Design Education at Queens University Belfast: Philosophy, Framework, and Implementation.

M.A. Price*, A. Murphy†, J.M. Early‡, T. Robinson§, D. Soban**, J. Butterfield††

CEIAT, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Queens University, Belfast

There is increasing recognition across the education sector that design education needs to evolve to reflect the rapid advancements of technology in industry, and to ensure that the next generation of graduate engineers are equipped with the necessary skills to sustain innovation in the aerospace community. The Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate (CDIO) initiative has provided leadership through a framework for engineering education which has a strong focus on these key skills, recognising that engineers are those who create the world as we would like it to be. This paper gives an overview of how the CDIO principles have been incorporated into the Aerospace Engineering programmes at Queen's University Belfast. Reformulation of the pathways has enabled design to be embedded at the core of the programmes, supporting through the more traditional analytical disciplines and enhanced through emerging technologies (such as Systems Engineering and composite technologies). This is an evolutionary process, but there is already a notable transformation in the capability of students on graduation, their enthusiasm for design and enjoyment of the course.

I. Introduction he path to a skilled aerospace professional is a long journey, most usually typified by an in-depth educational programme followed by a significant period in industry honing these skills by applying them in real settings.

However, as technology has progressed over the years, the engineering science needed by professionals has increased in complexity and this has necessitated a change in the nature of engineering education for aerospace. Across the globe, there has been significant reflection on how these education programmes can best be formulated for these ever-evolving needs of industry1,2, and still remains a significant challenge today. The question is complex and there is no simple answer. Technology has progressed rapidly, and while the basic configuration of the commercial aircraft has not changed substantially, the efficiency and complexity of the aircraft systems has progressed very rapidly. In response, any formative education must provide sufficient depth and breadth in the underpinning sciences to produce effective engineering products. Particularly in the current economic climate, graduates emerging from education are expected to function and contribute as fully as possible much earlier in their careers with constraints on the viability of long apprenticeships. This challenge is being addressed by both local and global industry, government and academia in numerous initiatives3,4 (separate and collaborative). All are attempting to formulate a procedure which can both serve the needs of the many stakeholders (i.e. students, academic institutions, government, industry, society), while still producing competent engineers who can contribute to the future success of the aerospace industry. This paper describes the implementation of one of those initiatives: Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate (CDIO), in the aerospace programme at Queen's University in Belfast. To put this in context, the paper will first outline the

* Professor, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Senior Member † Lecturer, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Member ‡ Lecturer, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Senior Member § Lecturer, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Member ** Lecturer, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Senior Member †† Lecturer, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Member

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10th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference 13 - 15 September 2010, Fort Worth, Texas

AIAA 2010-9155

Copyright © 2010 by Mark A Price. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.

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aerospace degree programme at Queen's and the principles of the CDIO initiative before giving an overview of how this is implemented in the context of aircraft design within our pathways.

II. Aerospace Degree Programmes at Queens The Aerospace degrees at Queen's form part of the educational portfolio offered in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. There are two main programmes offered in Aerospace: A Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) and a Master of Engineering (MEng). The Bachelor programme is a standard 3 year honours degree programme comparable to BSc, BA etc. The Masters programme is a 4 year honours programme that, while still an undergraduate degree, has taught courses at a Masters academic level. The MEng programme in the UK was established to ensure that the top flight graduating engineers had additional depth and breadth in their education equipping them for rapid advancement in industry. The Masters programme, which is the focus of this paper, is the preferred educational foundation for obtaining professional status as a Chartered Engineer (CEng) after gaining suitable experience in industry post graduation. The CEng qualification is similar to the PE qualification in the USA. In order to ensure that professional standards within the educational process are maintained, an accreditation process, governed by the Engineering Council, is conducted by the Royal Aeronautical Society every five years. This is somewhat akin to the ABET recognition in the USA, but has an additional strong focus on the attributes of a professional engineer. The skill sets and attributes required in any accredited programme are detailed in the UK-SPEC document. Both BEng and MEng programmes are accredited, but the BEng graduates require additional educational elements, such as a traditional Masters degree, or a significant period of experience in industry before attaining Chartered status. UK-SPEC defines fine main categories of learning outcomes required for any accredited engineering educational programme5:

1. Underpinning science and mathematics, and associated engineering disciplines 2. Engineering Analysis 3. Design 4. Economic, social and environmental context 5. Engineering practice

These are further broken down into specific learning outcomes, but it is evident at the high level that they have a broad base, aimed at ensuring engineers are able to contribute fully to the engineering profession. Across the UK, accredited engineering programmes are tailored to their discipline but remain within this broad professional context.

A. MEng Degree Structure Within Queen's, the MEng programme lasts (typically) for a period of four years, and necessitates students to successfully complete 24 units (termed modules) in that time period for the successful award of their degree. Each module is typically defined as 160 hours of learning opportunity with 40 hours of revision and assessment. The academic years are semesterised, with two semesters of 15 weeks, 12 for teaching and 3 for examinations. It is worth noting that across the UK this structure tends to be fairly rigid, and students progress from matriculation to graduation in those fours years unless there are failures or exceptional circumstances. This is driven by the government funding mechanisms for undergraduate study which provide scholarships for a set period of time from entry. But within this tight time driven structure each programme freely decides on the content and weighting of all their subject matter, and in this there can be a wide variation. The Queen's MEng structure is shown in Figure 1. This degree programme typically attracts around 35 students each year, and are supported both by staff from the wider school, and a smaller number of specialised aerospace specialists. The strong industrial focus of the Aerospace research undertaken in Queen's is naturally reflected in the content of the degree programmes.

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Figure 1 – QUB MEng Structure

B. Educational Aims of Programme The main aim of the MEng Degree programme in Aerospace Engineering is to educate and train students for employment in Aerospace and allied industries with a career leading to Chartered Engineering status. From this, a number of key educational aims have been evolved across the years in order to reflect this, and to ensure that all the necessary elements required of the Aerospace professional are embedded within the core Aerospace content:

1. To develop a sound knowledge and in-depth understanding of the principles of aeronautical engineering and allied subjects.

2. To develop a knowledge and understanding of underpinning mathematical principles, and the application of commercial software to the solution of problems, and to understand the principles that underlie the operation of the software.

3. To train students in the systematic analysis of engineering problems, including those that lie outside their specialisation.

4. To introduce students to the fundamentals of engineering design (market, requirements, constraints, fitness for purpose, optimisation, evaluation) and aircraft design (sizing, regulations, industry standards, databases and information sources), and to grow in an awareness of working with technical uncertainty.

5. To develop the ability to use computational methods to solve specialised design problems. 6. To introduce a higher level of knowledge and understanding of the characteristic of materials and

processes, including cost, tolerances and quality issues, through courses taught by professional aerospace engineers.

7. To develop team working and time management skills through practical exercises, and to understand the need for ethical conduct in engineering.

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8. To develop a sound appreciation of the economic, social, legal and environmental contexts in which aerospace engineering is practised, and to introduce the idea of risk and risk management.

9. To develop an extensive knowledge and understanding of management and business practice. 10. To introduce students to the international aspects of engineering and to provide opportunity for them to

experience working with people from another culture. These high level aims are the driving force for an internationally outward looking programme aimed at producing highly functional graduates ready for participation in an international industry.

III. Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate - CDIO It is clear that there has always been a driving interest in in the formation of engineers and the precepts laid down by the governing bodies encapsulate all the desired skills and attributes demanded by industry and are regularly reviewed by the Engineering Council. However it became clear that in many instances rapid advancements in technology was shifting the emphasis towards engineering science to the detriment of the broader skills needed in professional practice3. Education portfolios became more theoretical and dry, and that the focus on engineers creating working products was becoming more blurred6. CDIO was a transformative educational initiative established by a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and KTH Gottenberg and Linkoping Sweden in the early 1990s. The aim was to realign the education of engineers with the needs of industry by ensuring that the creation of working products was once again the raison d’etre for an engineer, as encapsulated in the CDIO vision4.

CDIO is based on a commonly shared premise that engineering graduates should be able to: Conceive – Design — Implement — Operate complex value-added engineering systems in a modern team-based engineering environment to create systems and products.

The CDIO initiative has grown into a worldwide grouping of interested engineering educators and has spread from its strong aerospace roots to cover many of the many engineering disciplines. For a practically-oriented school such as Queen's, this initiative fitted very well with the ethos of the staff and curriculum, and Queens was one of the five initial members of the grouping. Over the last ten years, the university has gradually adopted the core principles of CDIO into teaching practices to the point where it is strongly embedded in the aims and objectives of the Mechanical, Aerospace and Product Design and Development programmes. The CDIO programmes has 12 standards, but the first of these encapsulates the real ethos of the initiative:

Standard 1 — CDIO as Context Adoption of the principle that product and system lifecycle development and deployment — Conceiving, Designing, Implementing, and Operating — are the context for engineering education

The premise is that truly aligned educational programmes should have the principles of creating working products firmly embedded in the curriculum from the outset. This is complemented in the additional 11 standards which emphasis aspects such as the need for design build experiences, and a fully integrated curriculum. In addition to these standards, a CDIO syllabus has been developed which places a strong emphasis on skills that need to be developed by graduate engineers (including subject specific skills and transferable skills) in order to become effective members of industry, and articulating the need for educators to embed practice of these skills in educational frameworks. Knowledge of the underlying engineering science subjects remains a key element of the syllabus, but this is enhanced by stronger appreciation of the physical world is relates to, how it can be modelled and its behaviour predicted. Moreover, it would then be entwined with skills such as reasoning and problem solving so the application to systems is better understood.

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Figure 2: Engineering Science Underpins the Design Spine

V. Year One In their first year an Introduction to Aerospace Engineering course which runs in both semesters provides a formative introduction to Aerospace engineering, with the focus on design emphasizing as early as possible the experience of trial, failure, uncertainty in the design process, but moreover the success in creating operational systems. Following many of the key skills in the CDIO and UK education syllabi, the introductory course provides approaches and exposure to problem solving and simple design exercises using gliders, flight simulators, wing spars and wind turbines. These projects are all intended to challenge analytical students to be open and seek working solutions using practical approaches and solid engineering mechanics to predict behaviour and guide decisions. The challenges are general and at a simple analytical level to cope with the low level of engineering theory possessed by the students at this stage in their education. Through this series of structured activities, students are encouraged to engage with engineering practice in a hands-on environment, to ensure that an attachment of principle to practice in a working engineering environment is developed at an early stage in their education. This additionally promotes the development of broader multidisciplinary skills – promoting creativity, innovation and questioning capabilities – which are usually underdeveloped (or absent) in students who have just completed secondary level education. Ultimately the purpose is to expose student engineers to processes and procedures associated with engineering design. The course has been structured to provide an integrated view on the mutually supporting disciplines – structures, fluids, manufacturing technology, dynamics, flight mechanics, explored through a number of aviation-themed projects. Students learn experientially to develop deeper understanding of fundamentals while simultaneously developing skills in Design Principles, Professional Conduct, Time Management, Communication and Team Work (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Introduction to Aerospace Engineering Course Structuring Each theme is designed to (a) incorporate the theory introduced in the previous lab, and to (b) introduce new theory

from additional modules in the pathway

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There are three main thematic areas - 'Design for Flight (discovering about the pitfalls of aerospace design in the Queen's Flight Simulator), 'Structural Design' (through the design, build and test of a wing spar) and 'Wind Turbine Design' (experimentation and evaluation of a minature wind turbine) (Figure 4). In order to kick start the development of some of the wider professional skills, each theme is supported through embedded professional skills, engineering practice and design activities. There is a logical progression in theory from one exercise to the next, building up the theory from project to project so that by completion of the module students are fully integrating theory from all eight core disciplines together to develop an engineering solution. There is a continual reference to the engineering science disciplines. The outcome is that students have an appreciation of creating a working product using the range of skills they have been learning. They discover that analysis is very useful in making concepts work. Figure 4: Three introductory projects – building structures with sticks, a windmill and a rubber band airplane.

VI. Second Year The goals in the first year courses are to motivate and excite the students about their aeronautical engineering career, as well as provide them with some of the basic skills they will need, in the form of fundamental engineering classes. During the second year, the students add to these skills with more detailed disciplinary courses. More importantly, they start seeing and understanding the physical and mathematical links between the disciplines, and how they work together to form a cohesive, robust, and successful engineering product in the form of an aircraft. Although the students had a basic engineering design course in first year, it is during the second year that they are first exposed to the specifics of the aircraft design process. Unlike many universities that delay design education until a capstone course in the student’s final year, the Queen’s curriculum introduces and reinforces design throughout the student’s academic career. The core courses in the second year are aircraft-specific. Their first flight mechanics course introduces the students to the anatomy, physics, and performance of an aircraft in flight. They also have a course each in the ‘Big Three’ of the aerospace disciplines: aerodynamics, structures, and propulsion. The CDIO themes and ideals led to a dedicated course in aircraft systems engineering, where students are introduced to the basic principles of systems engineering practice. Basic systems tools and methods related to requirements definition, functional flow and allocation, design option structuring as well as trade study methods and risk analysis are all covered. This module is delivered prior to the main project based elements of the Aerospace degree path in Stage 3, where its success has been evidenced by the application of the tools and methods in student research and project work. The professional studies course introduces the students to engineering economics, law and legal issues as they pertain to engineering, and health and safety. And finally, the students augment their aerospace knowledge with more sophisticated mathematics and a course in electronic systems. Although cross references are made in these courses to the other disciplines, it is really the design course that brings these topics together for the first time, in a more sophisticated and analytical way than in first year. At this point the

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basics of the traditional three step conceptual/preliminary/detail design process are described and introduced before focusing on the conceptual design process in more detail. Initial sizing, parametric sizing, and propulsion are taught along with basic structures, weight and balance. The concept of trade studies is reinforced, and the students become well versed in requirements, capabilities, and how to make design decisions. Simple exercises are given for each main topic and students develop analytical tools for each which they will then carry forward and develop throughout their undergraduate career. Unlike earlier models of the course, each exercise and tool development is completed by each individual student. This was to address a deficiency in the former teamwork model, in which students worked together to complete the exercises. While more efficient, the result was that the students became individual experts in only part of the design process, rather than becoming versed in the entire process. However, after each student completes his studies individually, the class concludes with a team project in which the students use their tools and experience collectively to conduct the initial sizing and configuration for a commercial or military aircraft. In this way, the students gain both individual foundational knowledge as well as the experience of working as part of a team. At the end of their Stage 2 courses, the students have mastered the basic physics and mathematics of aircraft and the aircraft as a system. They have also, individually and collectively, developed tools and spreadsheets that they then continuously enhance and use throughout their academic careers (and often, throughout their professional careers as well). They have become well versed in the individual disciplines of aircraft design, yet also understand how they fit together and what trades must be made in each discipline to create a robust, successful system overall. Their ‘soft skills’, including teamwork and communication, have been developed and practiced. Overall, they are well prepared for their final year of studies, which will include more detailed analysis techniques for the disciplines, and the chance to use their tools and skills for the development and enhancement of an actual flying vehicle.

VII. Third Year The third year has two design courses, Preliminary Design and Aircraft Design. In Preliminary Design, the students are expected to, in small teams, continue the design of the aircraft that they designed conceptually in their second year. They move on to the preliminary design stage. They are expected to choose a wing design, including the planform and airfoil. They size the stabilising and control surfaces, design the undercarriage, choose the systems, and perform a preliminary structural design of the aircraft. They predict the aircraft performance, perform static and dynamic stability and control analyses, analyse the structure of the wings and fuselage, create a manufacturing plan, predict the manufacturing and operating costs, and ensure that their aircraft meets operational requirements and a number of regulatory requirements. Iteration is emphasised here, and the exercise is carried out in two clear blocks where the initial configuration is studied in more detail and the loop is repeated, in order to emphasise that design is an iterative process and that there is always uncertainty, even late in the design process. This module requires them to use a large number of the analytical tools they have developed in other modules. The focus is not on developing tools, but using them in context and understanding the relevance of engineering science analysis and how that can be used to make design decisions. The module provides context and motivation for the technical skills they learn outside the module. It also further develops the crucial non-technical skills of teamwork, time management, written communication, and presentation. In the second half of the year, the students perform a CDIO capstone project. This team project requires the students to design, build, and fly a remote-controlled model aircraft (Figure 5). They are provided with an RFP that states both the minimum requirements of the aircraft and an objective to maximise or minimise. This allows the students both an achievable means to success and an opportunity to excel, and the teams within the class an opportunity for friendly competition. In the first year that the project was incorporated into the programme, the students modified an existing model aircraft. The module has since been changed to require the design and construction of the aircraft from scratch. The students are provided with a number of tools to enable the construction of the aircraft, including computer-controlled foam cutter. The module is assessed with a combination of a written report, an assessment of the performance and innovation of the aircraft, and a teamwork mark. This last assessment component is informed by a peer assessment exercise. The students are expected to use a combination of the analytical and design tools they have learned in their degree to date and practical skills such as hand-manufacturing methods, structural testing, and model aircraft flying. This module allows the students to explore the limits of the analytical tools, and to see the

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difference between the predictions of the as-designed aircraft and the behaviour of the as-built aircraft. Though the design-build-fly project has only been running for a short time, the initial response of the students has been very positive. The students report being highly motivated by the project and interested in the material, and that the learning in this module has exceeded the learning in any other module they have taken in the programme.

Figure 5: Final Checks & Sample Aircraft Resulting From Stage 3 Design Activities.

VIII. Conclusions

Implementation of the CDIO initiative in the aerospace programmes at Queen's has led to a strongly integrated undergraduate curriculum in which aircraft design is the main spine, supported by key engineering science disciplines. The change in emphasis has helped staff and students with understanding of design and design education and a strong practical focus has clearly benefitted the students. It is already notable that engagement has increased and both breadth and depth of knowledge has improved. Students have developed their own analytical tools to support design decisions and through applying these seen the fruits of their labour. Staff have also engaged and with reflection and review after each semester the course continues to improve.

IX. References 1. Gordon B.M. “What is an Engineer?”, Invited Keynote Presentation, Annual Conference of the European

Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, 1984 2. The Boeing Co. “Desired Attributes of an Engineer”, http://www.boeing.com/educationrelations. 3. Finniston M, “Engineering our Future – Report of the Committee of Inquiry to the Engineering Profession,

London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1980 4. Crawley E, Malmqvist J, Ostlund S, Broduer D, “Rethinking Engineering Education – the CDIO

Approach”, Springer, 2007. 5. EC-UK, “Accreditation of Higher Education Programmes”, Engineering Council, UK, 2008. 6. Crawley E, ibid, Chapter 2 pp15. 7. AIAA Design Build Fly Competition : http://www.aiaadbf.org/

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8. SAE Aero Design Competition http://students.sae.org/competitions/yearinreview/2009.pdf