General Card #3460
Carport Innovation Challenge in Structural Analysis
Summary
The goal is to include KEEN’s 3C through a carport product innovation challenge. This activity could be conducted outside class hours or during recitations.
Description
Structural Analysis is a fundamental engineering course required for all juniors. Although it is concerned with the analysis of structures, it helps students develop essential engineering skills including analytical thinking, problem solving, and mathematical competency. Any successful design requires a correct structural analysis.
The goal is to include KEEN’s 3C through a carport product innovation challenge. The objective is to empower students to explore innovative solutions, improve their ability to make connections between structural analysis and pre-requisite courses, and validate the concepts with a hands-on experiment. The project includes four components: market research, physical experiments, structural analysis, and sales brochure (and/or video) development. AI/ML tools, such as Chat GPT and Google Trends, are also used. The project is suitable for teams of three students. After completion, the students are expected to have a better understanding of product development including the market search, prototype testing, structural analysis, and marketing.
Curiosity
- Demonstrate constant curiosity about our changing world
Students will have the opportunity to conduct research to learn about the products available in the market and identify opportunities for new product development. Each team is required to identify at least three options to investigate. The goal is to raise students’ curiosity and lead to a successful product development that integrates their technical knowledge with their innovation while creating exceptional value for the customer.
Connections
- Integrate information from many sources to gain insight
Students will conduct physical experiments to test the deflection and stability characteristics of each product option (structural system) considered. This will also require them to use their knowledge accumulated through pre-requisite courses such as Statics and Strength of Materials. The subsequent structural analysis stage will require students to apply their freshly learned knowledge from this course to their product development. They will make decisions on the most suited analysis methods while still validating their results with approximate analysis.
Creating Value
- Identify unexpected opportunities to create extraordinary value
Each team is required to demonstrate the value created by their innovation to a potential investor. This will require creating a sales brochure (and/or video) for making their final sales pitch by demonstrating the advantages of their innovation, and gaps it fills in the market. While the project does not have a direct design component, the support reactions and deflections (calculated using structural analysis methods) will be used to justify the design efficiency. As the final deliverable, the sales brochure (and/or video) will justify their rationale in proposing their final product innovation and convince potential customers to purchase this product.
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