Introduction

This clearly indicates that most of the time design leads to development of a product, and whenever we talk about product development it leads to engineering. So it is evident that design is the most important aspect of engineering. Engineering design is the systematic method of applying scientific and mathematical principles to plan the development of a new product having improved required performance or of a manufacturing process that is more efficient than the existing one to produce better quality products, increase productivity, make the production economical or make the process more eco-friendly. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), an organisation that accredits education programs in ‘applied science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology’, defines engineering design as ‘the process of devising a system, component, or process to meet desired needs’ (ABET 2014, p. 4). It also indicates that designing is basically a decision-making process, in which science and engineering are used to optimally utilise the resources to meet any objective. This is actually a description of an engineering design curriculum, but we can easily use it as an elaborate definition of the concept. The preceding long definition

of engineering design includes validation in addition to objectives and constraints. The engineering product or process designed to achieve particular objective(s), while considering all of the constraints in the process of achieving them, needs to be validated experimentally. Another important aspect derives from the definition of engineering design, that is, the use of mathematical sciences during the design process. Mathematical modelling is the most important tool for any kind of engineering design. Today, with the development of strong computational facilities, modelling is accompanied by simulation and optimisation.