DESIGN METHODS

Design Methods & Technology Project

Table of Contents

Introduction3

Management3

The Brief4

The Market4

The product design Specification5

Conceptual Design6

Design and engineering tasks involved within the project.7

Morphological Analysis9

Weight and RateMatrix11

Detail Design11

Design+Review11

Failure+Mode+and+Effect+Analysis13

Conclusion17

References18

Design Methods & Technology Project

Introduction

The washing machine is a domestic appliance that has dramatically changed the laundering of clothes. Washing clothes was a tiresome household chore and required high physical exertion to get the clothes clean. Before the invention of the washing machine, clothes were washed and cleaned by agitating them with a typical pounder with short, stool-like legs, scrubbing them on a washboard and wringing them with a mangle. By the 19th century, many inventors were looking for a means of harnessing either water or steam power to alleviate the hard work of washing clothes. (Davies 2009: 236-237) Between 1851 and 1871, approximately 2000 patents were granted in Great Britain and America for a variety of washing appliances, which had to be filled with heated water and used either rotating drums, gyrators or dollies to agitate the clothes. Most of these machines needed to be hand-cranked and clothes tended to get tangled around the rotating dolly elements.

Management

A project to design a novel washing machine that incorporates original characteristics was developed by engineering students of the Mechanical Department (DEM) of the University of Aveiro (UA) and by professional designers of the Department of Investigation and Development for Industrial Design (IDD) of the School of Arts and Design of Matosinhos (ESAD), who performed conceptual studies and the CAD modelling of the appliance(Nong 2003: 159-163 ). The development of the washing machine prototype was a final-year mechanical engineering project. Within the project, several aspects were carefully studied: conceptual studies; scaled prototyping; structural engineering; materials selection; CAD/CAM mould making; advanced sandwich composite-structure manufacture; automation (programming and control); and testing. Teaching-learning based on projects has given excellent results and is part of the teaching philosophy implemented in these last few years at the Department.

The Brief

The development of a product is an activity that presupposes the conjugation of different know-how and competency in areas of industrial and engineering design. However, other areas of knowledge, such as physiology, management, sociology and architecture, can play a decisive role within the design process, from product innovation to marketing. Product design teams are increasingly interdisciplinary to guarantee the success of products. (Darwish 2009: 141-148)

The Market

In the first decade of the 1900s, electric motors were incorporated into the design of washing machines, but manual systems still predominated until well into the 1920s. It was due to the greater availability of electric power that the use of domestic washing machines grew rapidly, and machines such as the one illustrated in Fig. 2 were common at the time. However, water heating still remained as a problem, only resolved by the end of World War II. During the post-war years, some companies produced sleek, top-loading washing machines that incorporated mangle-like wringers and some had improved automatic controls, requiring less supervision. The top loading models have become popular in America, but in Europe the front-loading washing machines have ...