Engineering Design: A Project-Based Introduction, Fourth Edition

PREFACE

When we started on the first edition of this book in the late 1990s, we could not have predicted that we would someday be asked to prepare a fourth edition of a text for a then-controversial course. At that time, a cornerstone introduction to engineering design was indeed considered improbable, if not impossible or meaningless. Now such courses are a staple of many engineering programs, and we are proud to have helped bring that curricular adaptation to life. We have also been part of a similar adaptation of engineering's capstone courses, which were then often undertaken more in response to accreditation needs than a desire for real-world projects. Today externally focused capstone courses, some modeled on Harvey Mudd College's Engineering Clinic, not only give students an authentic design experience, but also often introduce them to working with peers scattered around the world. The students in the classroom or design studio have also changed: Many more women and underrepresented minority students now major in engineering.

These transitions have been accompanied by an evolution in the discipline of design and in the perception of engineering design by the faculties of engineering schools. In particular, design is now a recognized intellectual discipline, with a vocabulary, structure, and methods that reflect our increasing ability to articulate what we are doing when we design something. And as with many other disciplines, design ranges from the narrow and mathematical ...