Detailed Design

At some point in a design process, the designers will actually have to specify the size, shape, material, tolerances, manufacturing information, and other detailed information that will allow their design to be realized. This stage of design is called detailed design. It must be noted, of course, that the last 20% of the detailed design work - which takes 80% of the effort - is usually about optimising a design to be as efficient, effective, and affordable as possible. It is in the last 20% of the detailed design that contracts are won or lost, and so it is very important. However, one must also remember that one can only get to the last 20% of the design once one has done the first 80%. So, (a) students can do detailed design, and (b) they should do detailed design in order to understand just how important it is to product development. First, let us summarize the design process that has been described so far.

1. Design problem clarification and analysis. We studied the problem,

brainstormed various ideas, and from those, established certain key descriptions of the design problem. This include: the design characteristics, the functional requirements, the constraints, and the performance metrics. At this point, no commitment is made to what the product will look like, but we do have a good understanding of what it is supposed to do. 2. Conceptual design and evaluation. In this stage, general concepts for the product as a whole were developed, refined, and evaluated. The evaluation is done with respect to criteria derived from the problem specification. At the end of this stage, a single general design idea is identified as the "lead solution" for the problem. 3. Systems design. In this stage, we interconnected functions into groups, thus defining systems in our product, and specified the kinds of interfaces needed to make the systems interact properly. At the end of this stage, we could envision the various subassemblies needed to make our product. Now the idea has to be fleshed out - detailed - to the point where a manufacturer could actually make the product. That's what detailed design is.

From systems to parts

In "real-life" complex products (cars, boats, planes, etc.) each system can be treated like a separate design problem, and we could start all over again at step 1 (above). For example, in designing a car, one might start with designing the overall systems of a car, but then treat the design of the engine as a separate problem, and apply all the same methods to it. One generally knows that there are no subsystems because one can easily envision a single component, be it a bolt, a lug, a motor, a hydraulic cylinder, and so on, to fill in the role of a systems component. For example, consider the design of a stapler for home use. We might easily envision the following systems:

Structural system. These are the components that carry all the loads that occur during the use of the stapler. Stapling system. These are the components that actually do the stapling. User interface. These are the components that allow a user to use the stapler safely and efficiently. Storage system. These are the components that hold and deliver the staples to the stapling system.

Detailed design is about designing the actual parts of the product. So detailed design starts here, by looking at the functional structures and starting to choose physical elements that can implement the functions of each system. Since each system is defined in terms of PCs, FRs, and constraints on the whole product, each part ends up providing some of the functions needed to make the product work. So in deciding what kind of parts to use, you will often also find yourself looking back to your PDS document.

Some details about detailed design

Detailed design must provide the manufacturer with enough information to make all the parts needed for the product and to assemble the parts properly. An important implication of this is that you may find an existing part in a catalog that is just right for your purposes (fasteners like bolts and screws are obvious examples). If a part can be ordered or purchased from an existing source, then there is no need to draw it. This is an important rule: do not design something, if you can find something already designed. Let's say your product requires a gear. It makes economic sense to use an existing gear. In that case, you would find the appropriate gear, and specify that it be used in your design - you do NOT need to draw such a part separately. However, even if you find parts online, or in a hardcopy catalog, you must still indicate how the part is to be assembled into the product. So all parts, even those for which detailed drawings are not provided, must be shown in the "assembly drawing" of your product. All parts, even the so-called off-the-shelf ones, must also be listed in your design's Bill of Materials. When doing a detailed design of a part, one must address the following issues:

size & shape: what will the part look like? materials: what will the part be made of? [Obviously, this is strongly related to size and shape, since the properties of size, shape, and material together define how the part will perform] connectivity: how will the part connect to other parts? operation: how will the part perform its function?

All but the last item can be treated with technical drawings. The last item relates to testing - how we make sure that the part performs as expected and needed. This goes beyond the scope of this course, but it is still something to bear in mind. Since a product's parts may be elements of more than one system, the impact of changing the design of one part can have all kinds of different impacts on other parts in

other systems of the product. This means that you must pay careful attention to these interactions between parts. Here again the PDS documents can be very useful in helping a design team track all the possible variations that can arise just by changing one part. Never carry out detailed design without reference to the chosen concept and system. That is, know exactly what the part/component is supposed to do before designing it. The act of defining a component of a system puts constraints on the system itself. In other words, designing parts adds new constraints to the design. Think about the restrictions each part places on the system, and make sure the restrictions won't adversely affect the overall design. Generally, a reduction of component variety leads to shorter lead times, lower cost, and improved reliability. Do not forget about manufacturability. While you may not be able to define the cost of manufacture precisely, you can still make some generalisations. For example, steel is heavier than aluminum but easier to work with and thus cheaper to use in manufacturing. How important is weight with respect to cost? Make sure you've thought through how the product will be assembled. It is very easy to design assemblies that simply cannot be put together because of the order in which the parts must be assembled. Don't forget about installing fasteners - have you left enough room to insert nuts and bolts and the wrenches needed to tighten them? If you need to use a three inch long bolt to join two parts, is there room in the assembly for someone to slide the bolt into position and hold it with some kind of tool while the nut is being installed? Remember the KISS principle - simplicity is always good.

Load lines - a simple qualitative stress analysis

Even though you may not yet know enough math and physics to conduct a proper analysis of the structure of your product, you can make some very useful qualitative analyses. Using the concept of load lines is something that is useful and that you can do without knowledge all the math and just a little physics. The idea is that loads of any kind (electrical, mechanical, thermal, etc) "flow" much like water does: in a straight line unless it's deflected by something. Imagine water flowing through a pipe that suddenly gets wider. The water will fill the pipe both before and after the change in width; it will slow down where the pipe is wider. Also, think about water flowing over a step; it will keep at a fairly constant level before the step, but it will not turn a sudden right-angle at the step; rather, it will flow around the step smoothly. The same thing happens to forces applied to structures. Say you have a square steel plate with sharp corners, and you apply an external load to two adjacent sides of the plate, in the plane of the plate. The load will need to "move" through the plate. It will flow smoothly, even around the corners. Some examples of load lines are given in Figure 1. Look at the top left example. Imagine that it shows the top view of a channel that is

horizontal; imagine that the arrows at the bottom of the channel indicate the direction of flow of water entering the channel. Imagine the water flowing slowly through the channel and around the corner. Now, imagine you dropped a light plastic bead into the flow, and watched it as it is carried by the water current. It would trace out lines similar to the dashed lines in the figure. Notice that the lines:

are smooth - the bead does not suddenly turn a sharp corner never cross one another enter and exit the channel parallel to the flow arrows in and out of the channel never leave except via another arrow form the shortest reasonable path from entrance to exit without violating the other rules.

Figure 1: Examples of load lines.

Now think of the same geometry - not as a channel, but rather as a plate or block of some sort. The arrows indicate where the applied loads and reaction loads are applied. We assume the object is at equilibrium (it is not accelerating, rotating, etc.). The very same lines that marked the movement of the beads carried by the water also indicate how the forces moves through the analogous solid part. The more bunched up the lines are, the more force you have in any given region of the part. In the top, right part of Figure 1, the lines bunch up the most on the inside of the corner. That means this is where the forces will be most concentrated, which in turn

means that the inside corner is the region where the part is most likely to break. Similarly, the lines of flow at the outer corner are the most spread out. This means that this is where the forces are lowest, and where there is the least chance of the part breaking. What does this mean with respect to your design? It can be used to "tune" the design of the part's shape to match the forces that it will have to endure. Since the force lines bunch up at the sharp inside corner, it would help the design to remove the corner - that is, to replace it with a fillet. The bigger the fillet, the more well distributed the forces will be, and the less likely the part's failure will be. Also, don't forget that the part has a certain thickness (measured here out of the plane of the drawing). In order to make the part support forces in the inside corner, you might also consider making it thicker. This provides more material to carry those forces without changing the planar geometry of the part. Furthermore, since the forces are very low at the outer corner, there is little need of all that material. You can improve this part's design by putting a chamfer on that corner. The chamfer effectively removes material since it isn't needed. This makes the part lighter and cheaper due to the lesser amount of material needed. This technique doesn't only work with physical loads; it also works with thermal loads. Think of the shapes in Figure 1 as representing parts through which heat flows. The arrows represent sources and sinks for the heat. The other sides are considered perfectly insulated. (This is a big assumption, of course, but remember that we are only approximating the general behaviour of parts here.) In this case, heat will flow through the part following the dashed lines. The lines bunch up in areas of higher temperature and are spread out in areas of lower temperature. By thinking about how the heat flows, you may decide where most of the insulation needs to be placed, or which materials to use to ensure the heat is transferred well through the entire part.