Test Environments in Engineering Design: A conceptual study

Experimenting with solutions and technologies plays an important role in designing innovative products at a fast pace. A number of researchers have investigated the use of prototypes as means for experimentation in engineering design. This paper is taking a broader perspective, considering the fact that a prototype test includes both models of the product (prototype) and models of the real environment (test environment), and investigates how these models are entangled. Using concepts from Theory of Experimentation and Design of Experiments, a conceptual framework for decomposing and describing the prototype and the test environment is proposed. The applicability of the framework is then demonstrated through three select cases from design activities around the development of a flood protection system.