INNOVATIVE TEACHING APPROACH FOR THE DESIGN PROCESS OF MECHANICAL PRODUCTS

Nowadays, numerical simulation tools take a central place in the design process of mechanical products, to face the imperatives of reducing costs and development time. However, their use is often done for the validation of a solution in the latest stages of a project, even if they are more efficient earlier in the project for the help to find solutions. Statistical and optimization tools, in an approach based on designs of experiments and response surfaces methodologies, could be an important help, associated with numerical simulations, to find new product architectures. Nevertheless, their use is commonly reserved for complex problems with costly simulations. This article presents a design methodology based on numerical simulation and optimization tools to help to find original optimal architectures. The results of the experimentation of this design process on student projects are presented.