A New Graduate Course: Using Simulation Models for Engineering Design

Supercomputers and low cost high power workstations provide opportunities for the expanded use of large scale simulation models, allowing multiple runs for model validation, sensitivity analysis, or engineering design. Today's practicing engineers use these computing resources to help do design, often through ad hoc strategies for multiple runs of CAD software. Today's students in engineering and science have little access to formal training in the intelligent manipulation of the models that they develop. This paper describes a modern graduate course in engineering design, with a focus on the exercise of computer models to create new device designs, not just to analyze existing designs. Versions of the course have been offered at Cornell, Georgia Tech, and Penn State, to graduate students from a variety of engineering disciplines. Students exercise their knowledge of lecture materials using case studies based on state-of-the-art computer simulation models from industrial sponsors. The multidisciplinary nature of the course provides a foundation for more effective concurrent engineering manufacturing/design teams.