Designing Machines from Patent to Simulation

Designing Machines: From Patent to Simulation

Who Should Attend

The target audience for the course Designing Machines: From Patent to Simulation includes inventors, designers, hobbyists, teachers, and artists with some experience with foundational tools of engineering mathematics and modeling. Manufacturing engineers, physical plant supervisors, patent and IP attorneys, K-12 science/engineering instructors, architects, and those managing machine design projects are expected to gain knowledge directly related to their professions.

Course Description

Innovation in machine design stems from the many ways in which mechanical structure can be deployed to achieve function, converting power and energy into a predictable and desirable mechanical output. The scope of application of such innovation spans from the artistic through the industrial to the therapeutic, ranging from kinetic sculptures or autonomous factories to exoskeletal devices for rehabilitation of neuromuscular function.

The course Designing Machines: From Patent to Simulation aims to build working familiarity with the relationship between machine structure and function. Its just-in-time instructional design is placed squarely in the realm of applications, bringing mathematical and computational techniques to bear on practice when needed to validate intuition and verify detailed design choices. This is accomplished by building the learning experience around the analysis of patented inventions, demonstrating how a patent description may be reduced to a mathematical model that can be simulated on a computer in order to visualize function.

Through a combination of instructor-led demos and active-learning practicums, participants will explore key design choices in order to develop critical judgment about their functional and structural advantages and disadvantages.

Learning Outcomes

The course Designing Machines: From Patent to Simulation, aims to enable participants to

• Recognize key design elements of machines that relate structure to function.
• Understand how to turn a conceptual machine design into a computer simulation.
• Evaluate competing designs in terms of range of function and complexity of structure.

Computer and/or Software Requirements

Participants should bring a laptop computer.

Resources and References

• Dankowicz, H., Mambo and the Mambo Toolbox. http://danko.mechanical.illinois.edu/Mambo/
• Dankowicz, H., “Teaching Advanced Modeling of Multibody Mechanisms to Non-traditional Engineering Students.” http://danko.mechanical.illinois.edu/Mambo/ASEE.pdf
• Dankowicz, H., Multibody Mechanics and Visualization https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781852337995

Sample Course Outline

Day 1 – Building blocks

Day 2 – Movement and animation

Day 3 – Physical realism

About the Instructor

Harry Dankowicz is professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his Master of Science in Engineering Physics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden in 1991 and his PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University in 1995. He has held faculty positions at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and, since 2005, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prof. Dankowicz is a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the US National Science Foundation, as well as the Fred Merryfield Design Award and the Archie Higdon Distinguished Educator Award from the American Society for Engineering Education. He serves as Editor of Applied Mechanics Reviews and is an author of several textbooks, including on the design of multibody mechanisms, and an inventor of a self-calibration technology for harvest combine mass-flow sensors.