ENES 489P Special Topics in Engineering: Hands-On Systems Engineering Projects

INSTRUCTORS

Associate Professor Mark Austin ,
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Institute for Systems Research,
University of Maryland, College Park.

Professor John Baras ,
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Institute for Systems Research,
University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Shah-An Yang,
Institute for Systems Research,
University of Maryland, College Park.
E-mail: syang "at" isr.umd.edu


Midterm Project Presentations, Spring Semester 2011

Final Project Reports, Spring Semester, 2011

CLASS

Meet the Class: [ Fall 2010 ] [ Spring 2011 ]
Notes from Class: [ Fall 2010 ] [ Spring 2011 ]

PROJECTS

Project Resources: [ Fall 2010 ]
Project Abstracts: [ Fall 2010 ] [ Spring 2011 ]


Project Presentations, Fall Semester 2010

Final Project Reports, Fall Semester 2010

GOALS

This hands-on design projects course will expose senior-level undergraduate and graduate-level students from all areas of engineering to exciting career opportunities in the systems engineering field.

Students will be introduced to the technical aspects of systems engineering practice through team-based project development and a systematic step-by-step procedure for product development that includes working with a real-world customer to define operations concepts, requirements gathering and organization, synthesis of models of system behavior and system structure, functional allocation to create system design alternatives, formal assessment of design alternatives through tradeoff analysis, and established approaches to testing and validation/verification

2010-2011 Acadmic Year

Project work will be driven by three product development projects provided by the Army Research Laboratory and Aberdeen Proving Ground:

  • Product 1: Black box for Army Transport Vehicles,
  • Product 2: Integrated Security of Wireless Sensor Networks, and
  • Product 3: Integrated Vehicle Bus Architected for Army Transport Vehicles


COURSE CONTENTS - SPRING SEMESTER, 2011

The course will consist of lectures and hands-on project development in the laboratory.
The lecture topics to be covered include:

  • Systems Engineering in Mainstream US Industry
  • Models of Systems Engineering Development
  • Economics of System Development
  • Strategies of Systems Engineering Development
  • Foundations of Model-Based Systems Engineering
  • Modeling abstractions for System Behavior and System Structure
  • Introduction to Languages for Visual Modeling of Systems (e.g., UML and SysML).
  • Requirements Gathering and Organization (e.g., use case modeling).
  • Non-functional requirements.
  • Requirements Allocation/Flowdown and Traceability.
  • Functional Allocation to Create the System-Level Design
  • Simplified Approaches to Tradeoff Analysis (e.g., using spreadsheets).
  • Requirements Evaluation (e.g., for system testing and verification).

The hands-on laboratory and homework exercises will cover:

  • Systems Thinking
    • Abstraction and Hierarchical Decomposition
    • Law of Leaky Abstraction
  • Requirements
    • Use Cases
    • Non-functional Requirements
  • Design
    • System Structure with Block Diagrams
    • System Behavior with Activity Diagrams
    • Combining Structure and Behavior (e.g., with swimlanes and sequence diagrams).
  • Modeling and Simulation
    • Matlab or Modelica
    • Numerical Integration
    • Discrete Event Simulation
  • Verification / Optimization
    • Verification of Functional Requirements using Simulation Traces
    • Verification of Non-functional Requirements using Constraints and Parametric Diagrams
    • Trade Studies using Spreadsheets and Pareto Principle

Guest lectures will also be given by Systems Engineering Professionals from industry and government labs.

The laboratory work will include working with a real-world customer (industry and government experts) to define the project operational concepts and requirements, formulation of visual models, and formulation of design alternatives suitable for tradeoff analysis.

COURSE CREDITS AND PREREQUISITES

  • This course will be 3 credits.
  • Senior-level status in engineering.


TIME AND LOCATION OF CLASS/OFFICE HOURS

  • Lectures will be given in CSIC 2107 at 5.00-6.15pm every Tuesday.
  • Laboratory work will be conducted in the Systems Engineering and Integration Laboratory (SEIL) at ISR (Rm. 2250, A.V. Williams Building), 3.30-6.00 pm every Thursday.
  • Office Hours. By appointment.
    For a quick response to your problems, send the instructors an e-mail.

REVISED SCHEDULE FOR SPRING 2011.

  • Lectures will be given in CSIC 2120 at 3.30-4.45 pm every Thursday.
  • Laboratory work will be conducted in the SEIL in two shifts.
    Section 1: Tuesday, 3.30 - 6.00 pm. Section 2: Thursday, 4.45 - 7.15 pm.


STUDENT ASSESSMENT

  • The term project and presentation will account for 60% of the grade.
  • There will be three midterm exams, spaced approximately one month apart (20%).
  • There will be five homeworks, accounting for 20% of the grade.

Students may drop the lowest homework score.
Students may drop the lowest midterm exam score.
There will be no makeup exams.

Last Modified: June 08, 2011.
Copyright © 2010-2011, Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland.