Invited paper to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Process Industries Meeting, Managing Information for Profit, the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre
S F Bush
Background
In the twenty years from 1960 computing had an increasing influence on engineering research and the more fundamental aspects of design, but during the last decade its influence on engineering and manufacturing practice has acquired the characteristic of a revolution. Broadly speaking over the last thirty years the computer has moved from being the specialised tool of a few mathematically able engineers and scientists to being an everyday resource of the many, possibly the majority of engineers today. This immense change has come about because of the rapid reduction in the hardware cost of computing. It is worth briefly reviewing that particular change because it both determines the present and is a pointer to the future.
Invited paper to 7th Engineering Design Conference, Birmingham, England, 25th-27th September 1984.
S F Bush
Abstract
The paper sets out to examine the relevance of plastics to engineering through the application of particular design concepts. The objective is to provide an overall analytical view of the factors which determine the choice of the material and manufacturing technology combination. Design of a system or artefact is seen as the specification of elemenatary functions and components and their interconnections. The complexity of a system is then characterised as the sum of these. The cost and some major properties of different polymeric materials are related to a simple definition of their chemical complexity.
The application of particular materials is governed by their utility expressed as the sum of their effects on (a) a component and (b) the whole system. To determine this, the manufactured cost is expressed as simple functions of the raw material, process and artefact complexities, and the scale of production. The main advantage of polymeric materials is found through new decompositions of the overall design.
