Complex engineering system learning through study of engineering failure cases using 3D animations

Abstract

Complex engineering systems often require dynamic coordination of multidisciplinary teams with conflicting objectives. Failing to understand the complex relationships among the conflicting objectives may result in serious engineering failures. In engineering education, one of the challenges in teaching complex systems is the lack of effective tools to demonstrate system dynamics, especially spatial-temporal relationships in the system. The described project in this paper is supported by grants from Engineering Education program of the National Science Foundation. In the project civil/construction engineering cases are used as the context to test the proposed new teaching/learning tool on the subject and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed tool. In building system design, structural designs mainly focus on the behavior of structures under design loads specified for operating stage. Typically less attention is given to the dynamic transient load during various construction stages. The insufficient considerations of the construction related transient loads may reach the critical point during construction and cause structural failure. For example, there were cases of bridge collapse during construction due to inadequate considerations of the load dynamics during construction. Also, many factors affecting construction transient loads were not technical. Rather, they are management related such as construction sequence and cost considerations. Thus, enabling construction students to learn from the similar cases through effective media is critical to avoid repeating the mistakes. Based on the case-based and problem-based learning theory, the authors explored using 3D computer simulation of failure cases to help construction engineering and management students to develop a better understand of the dynamics between design and construction. In this study, a case about a high-rise residential building was used. The building collapsed due to many factors, such as improper construction sequence, poor selection of staging area, bad weather, and lack of shoring of foundation wall. Through this case, computer simulation illustrated the interactions of elements of different systems, including building, nature and the social-economic system, and how and why the interactions eventually led to a failure. To better understand the complexity of construction systems, information that was presented by the simulation was organized based on the structure-behavior-function (SBF) theory. In addition, this paper also discussed the technology used in the case study and simulation and the application of such simulation in construction education. The assessment method is to compare the learning results between the control student groups and the experimental student groups, on SBF concepts on complex engineering systems. In summary, this paper presents the research background, a case study, research methodology, and 3D cases animations as a potential solution to address the existing problem - the lack of effective teaching tool to effectively teach context-rich case-based engineering cases. Since this is an ongoing research project, the final results of the hypothesis tests are not available yet. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.