ENGINEERING AS EXPERIMENTATION

•    Experimentation (Preliminary tests or Simulations) plays a vital role in the design of a product or process.

•  In all stages of converting a new engineering concept into a design like,

First rough cut design,

Usage of different types of materials and processes,

Detailed design,

Further stages of work design and

The finished product,

Experiments and tests are conducted to evaluate the product. Modifications are made based on the outcome of these experiments.

•    The normal design process is thus iterative (modifications being made on the basis of feedback information acquired from the tests).

Even though various tests and experiments are conducted at various stages, the engineering project as a whole in its totality can be viewed as an experiment.