Closing the Design Cycle: Integration of Analysis, Simulation, and Measurements Results to Guide Students on Evaluation of Design

Dayal, A., Meehan, K. and Beex, A. A. (L.) (2013) Closing the Design Cycle: Integration of Analysis, Simulation, and Measurements Results to Guide Students on Evaluation of Design. In: 2013 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition, Atlanta, GA, USA, 23-26 June 2013,

Abstract

One of the relatively recent innovations in electrical engineering education has been the redesign of the laboratory experience. Where once the emphasis was on demonstration of specific theoretical concepts and the development of measurement techniques that were taught by guiding students through the experiment with step-by-step instructions, elements of engineering design are now introduced into the students’ laboratory experiencei . Students are challenged to determine the components to use in given circuits and, later, the circuits that will have a desired operation, which was detailed in a design specification. To minimize the time spent on design experiments, student must not only know the basics that were gained from ‘cookbook’ experiments, but also the value of analysis and simulation before circuit construction and measurement and how to apply the results from analysis and simulations to debug the circuit. Engineering educators have begun to modify their approach to laboratory instruction to guide students as they develop the necessary skills for design. Most open-ended design experiments follow the design cycle, integrating steps that allow students to investigate, design, plan, create, and evaluate. However, motivating students to close the design cycle during their evaluation has been difficult. A large percentage of students are able to reflect on the operation of their circuits to determine if the design criteria within constraints have been achieved. However, few take the next steps to investigate what caused deviations from expected performance and to identify where they should focus efforts to redesign the circuit to more closely match the design specifications. Two approaches to stimulate students to complete the design cycle have been developed at Virginia Tech and used in junior-level courses. In one approach, students in an ac circuits laboratory course are asked to directly compare the results of their analyses with the measured results by physically overlaying plots of the expected and real signals. In the second approach, the students in a course on continuous and discrete signals perform two filter designs using the same circuit topology. The students characterize the performance of a cascaded bandpass filter where each bandpass filter has the same center frequency and bandwidth. They are then to redesign a cascaded bandpass filter to meet a more stringent specification for bandwidth and ripple. Students must evaluate the performance of the first cascaded filter design to determine how to approach the design of the second cascaded filter.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Meehan, Professor Kathleen
• Authors: Dayal, A., Meehan, K., and Beex, A. A. (L.)
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering