Designing a composite material pressure vessel for manufacture: A case study in concurrent engineering

Modeling and gaining an understanding of the interaction between information from design and manufacture is an important step in the development of techniques and methods for concurrent engineering. The authors find that there is a need for a test problem to study and understand various issues associated with the integration of information from design and manufacture. In this context, a conceptual model of a process for design that includes two principal phases, namely, ‘designing for concept’ and ‘designing for manufacture’, and a number of events along a design ‘time-line’ is presented. Then, a comprehensive, non-textbook case study in design using composite materials and dealing with the integration of material selection, analysis, dimensional synthesis and manufacturing, is tackled using Decision Support Problems (a multiobjective formulation). The focus in the paper is on the method of formulation and solution of the case study, and understanding the subsequent ramifications of considering design and manufacturing concurrently.