Design
Design research at Texas A&M University focuses on creating knowledge, methods, representations, processes, and future design researchers to enable both superior practice and education in engineering design. In the context of design research efforts, superior is broadly interpreted. Examples of superior include: more creative and innovative solutions; faster product or process realization; ease of manufacture; integration of company design, manufacturing, and product realization activities; failure avoidance or mitigation in complex systems, and innovative teaching pedagogy. Design researchers at Texas A&M are also involved in collaboration with sponsors designing large-scale, complex, multidisciplinary products, processes, and systems where expertise in the process of design is needed to identify and integrate a broad range of technical problems and activities. The Institute for Innovation and Design in Engineering (IIDE) fosters the synergy and integration of design research and education.
Current projects include:
- Creation and validation of innovation methods in concept synthesis
- Development of design-by-analogy methods
- Understanding engineering cognition
- Function based biomimetic design
- Product modeling, exchange, and reuse for complex systems
- Development of a Unified Theory of engineering design
- Development of a method for applying a Unified Theory of engineering design
- Development of a haptics design methodology to relate physical properties to value-based sensory evaluation of products
- Design of the harvesting and logistics systems for maximum energy content of biomass products
- Design and fabrication of nanofiber-based materials using electrospinning techniques
- Design of biomaterials for use in tribological applications in artificial joints - Development of inflatable habitable space structures
- Fatigue life prediction of dynamic component composite repairs
- A systems engineering approach to evaluate technologies and methodologies for open-hole measurement of formation properties to determine pressure
- A Virtual Organization for Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design (VOICED)
