Conceptual Design for African Engineers

Conceptual Design for African Engineers is made for engineers in product development in order to provide intellectual guidance in developing engineering products. It is especially designed to assist graduate engineers working as entrepreneurs in product development. Various steps such as product need identification, product specification, product conceptual design, selection of product ideas, and prototype testing are discussed. These are complemented by discussions on standardisation of products and ergonomics.

This work discusses these topics so a graduate engineer can be informed on what to do to develop an engineering product for the market, especially in a developing country, and can be used by either undergraduates or graduates.

The goal for this guide is to address the situation in which graduate engineers are not able to design simple machines. An engineer going through this educational book thoughtfully will be able to create an engineering product that can be made and sold.

About the Authors

Samuel Olu Atolagbe holds a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria and a professional engineers licence from Michigan State, USA. Formerly, he was the acting head of design department, African Regional Centre for Engineering Design and Manufacturing (ARCEDEM).

Dr Ademola Dare has BSc, MSc and PhD in mechanical engineering from University of Ibadan, Ibadan, NIGERIA. His research focused has been in modelling of thermal and biomedical systems, including flows in microchannels, heat exchangers, and internal combustion engines and with well over seventy international publications to his credit. He has supervised the completion of over thirty master's degree and nine doctoral students. Dr. Dare was a onetimehead of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and is currently the head of Department of Biomedical Engineering at University of Ibadan, Ibadan, NIGERIA.