Applied Technology for Product Design (H7125)

15 credits, Level 4

Spring teaching

The Applied Technology module will develop your mathematical skills in relation to real world scientific and engineering tasks. This will help you to understand a diverse range of engineering questions such as why planes fly, how to determine the right materials for a construction project, how to design and build basic electronic circuits and how to characterise the performance of a combustion engine.

For this module, you will experience a mixture of theoretical analysis and practical laboratory skills. This draws on areas from physics, maths and electronics. The sections on electronics will include developing laboratory skills in the design and analysis of basic electronic circuits, including the use of computer tools for simulation and analysis.

Students consider the design process from requirements analysis, generation of possible solutions, simulation and evaluation of alternative design options.

Topics include:

• statics: forces, equilibrium and stability, frameworks, friction, buckling, beam bending and torsion in a shaft
• dynamics: distance, velocity and acceleration, equations of motion
• thermodynamics: thermal properties of solids, liquids and gases. Gas laws, introduction to thermodynamic cycle analysis
• simple DC circuits: Ohm’s Law, Kirchhoff’s Law. Measurement of voltage, current and resistance. Equivalent circuits
• electronics: diodes, characteristics of amplifiers, digital and analogue circuits. Sensors e.g. tactile, light dependent, pressure dependent)
• design: generating requirements, evaluating designs, risk, understanding component specification sheets.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 54 hours of contact time and about 96 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.