Improving Common Model Understanding Within Collaborative Engineering Design Research Projects

In collaborative engineering design research projects, the efficient and effective collaboration between the individual research groups is an important factor for the overall success of the project. However, different disciplines, research foci and personal backgrounds influence successful collaboration. The work presented in this paper focuses on the collaboration concerning models developed by individual subprojects and proposes a framework to support the necessary collaboration. Existing shortcomings are identified within a large scientific project in combination with an extensive literature review. The developed framework is based on two checklists in form of a model requirements document and model specification containing important aspects of models that need to be considered and communicated during the research project. Beyond the successful application for supporting collaboration in engineering design research projects, the insights and implications of this paper can be transferred to all other collaborative projects, where models are to be communicated between individuals or teams.