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Automobile

By name AUTO, also called MOTORCAR or CAR is a usually four-wheeled vehicle designed primarily for passenger transportation and commonly propelled by an internal-combustion engine using a volatile fuel.

The modern automobile is a complex technical system employing subsystems with specific design and functions. Some of these consist of thousands of component parts that have evolved from new discoveries such as electronic computers, highstrength plastics, and new alloys of steel and nonferrous metals, as well as from factors such as air pollution, safety legislation, and foreign competition.

Passenger cars have emerged as the primary means of family transportation. Onethird of these are in the United States, where more than 1.5 trillion miles are traveled each year. Approximately 500 different models have been offered annually to U.S. car buyers, about half domestic and half foreign in origin. New designs have been brought into the market more quickly in recent years than in the past. It has permitted manufacturers to capitalize on their proprietary technological advances.

New technical developments are recognized to be the key to successful competition. Research and development engineers have been employed by automobile manufacturers to improve the car body, chassis, engine, drive train, vehicle control systems, occupant safety, and environmental emissions. And further work by the industry is necessary to meet the needs of the 21st century.

Vehicle design depends to a large extent on its intended use. Automobiles for offroad use in countries that lack service facilities must be durable, simple systems with high resistance to severe overloads and extremes in operating conditions. Conversely, most customers in Europe and North America expect more passenger comfort options, increased engine performance, and optimized high-speed handling and vehicle stability. Stability depends principally on the distribution of weight between the front and rear wheels, the height of the centre of gravity and its position relative to the aerodynamic centre of pressure of the vehicle, suspension characteristics, and whether front or rear wheels are used for propulsion. Weight distribution depends principally on the location and size of the engine. The common practice of frontmounted engines exploits the stability that is more readily achieved with this layout. The development of aluminum engines and new manufacturing processes has, however, made it possible to locate the engine at the rear without necessarily compromising stability.

EXERCISES AFTER READING THE TEXT

6. Translate the following word combinations:

a. To locate the engine at the rear; four-wheeled vehicle; volatile fuel; internalcombustion engine; to lack service facilities; centre of gravity; to exploit the stability; high resistance to; occupant safety; high-speed handling; distribution of weight;

design and function.

b. Привод на ведущие колеса; аэродинамический центр давления; перевозка пассажиров; цветной металл; удовлетворять потребности; целевое использование; приводить в движение; передние и задние колёса;

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характеристики подвески; основное средство; размещать двигатель сзади.

7.Pair work. Discuss the text using the following questions:

1.What is the car designed for?

2.How is it propelled?

3.What is key to successful competition?

4.Why have research and development engineers been employed?

5.What does vehicle stability depend on?

6.What does weight distribution depend on?

7.What has made it possible to locate the engine at the rear?

8.Prepare a presentation on the modern automobile and its use.

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Students’ Individual Work

Texts for supplementary reading

Text 1

Task 1. Read the text and answer the following questions

1.What is industrial design?

2.How do industrial designers develop concepts?

3.In what way do they prepare recommendations?

4.What does the field of industrial design encompass?

5.What does industrial design involve?

6.How do industrial designers work with a product?

7.What factors does an industrial designer consider?

8.What do industrial designers place emphasis on?

9.What do they control?

What is industrial design?

Industrial design (ID) is the professional service that creates and develops concepts

Industrial designers develop these concepts by collecting, analyzing and synthesizing data provided by the client or manufacturer. They prepare clear recommendations through drawings, models and verbal descriptions.

The field of industrial design encompasses designs for everything from a child's toy to an astronaut's space vehicle. Industrial design involves creating man-made products and improving their look, feel, and function. Industrial designers carry a product from an initial idea on paper and computer-assisted design to a physical prototype and final product. Multi-function cellular phones, trucks, household appliances, running shoes, and product packaging are all results of industrial designers’ jobs. A chair is a good example of a simple object that undergoes extensive planning from an industrial design perspective. A designer needs to consider not only the appearance and function of the chair but also these factors:

∙Practicality and durability of the materials

∙Physical characteristics of the consumers most likely to use that particular chair

∙Comfort and fatigue factors related to extended use

∙Environmental and safety concerns

∙The client's budget

Industrial designers give form to all mass-manufactured products in our culture. In their professional activity industrial designers place emphasis on the product aspects that relate to human needs and interests. It requires understanding of visual, tactile, safety and convenience criteria, with concern for the user.

Industrial designers also control technical processes and requirements for manufacture; marketing opportunities and economic constraints; and servicing processes. They work to ensure that design recommendations use materials and technology effectively, and comply with all legal and regulatory requirements.

Specialists in industrial design often consult people on a variety of problems

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concerned with a client's image. This activity also includes development of communication systems, interior space planning and exhibit design, advertising devices and packaging and other related services.

Industrial designers, as professionals bear contractual responsibilities to clients, protect the public safety and well-being, respect the environment and observe ethical business practice.

Task 2. Read the text once again and create own text entitled “M y concept of industrial design”.

Text 2

Task 1. Read the text and find answers to the following questions:

1.What does an industrial designer do?

2.What is his job?

3.What are industrial designers responsible for?

4.What does an introduction of a new product begin with?

5.In what form do they present options to the client?

6.How is the product tested?

7.What skills are vital for an industrial designer? Why?

What Does an Industrial Designer Do?

An industrial designer is the person who takes the ideas or concepts of an inventor or engineer and turns it into a marketable product. His job is to analyze an idea and create an item or product that is consumer-friendly and fills a need.

Industrial Designer Job Duties

Industrial designers are responsible for the look of many of the products which people buy and consume every day. The job of an industrial designer to create, plan and style manufactured goods, including automobiles, household products, food packaging, consumer electronics and medical equipment.

An industrial designer considers the usability, ergonomics and aesthetics of common mass-produced items to improve the design, function and marketing of these items. Industrial designers are responsible for the familiar look of brands and products like Jeep, iPods and the Coke bottle.

Job Description

The introduction of a new product generally begins as a concept in someone’s mind, so making it a reality is commonly a long and involved process. The designers create and sketch several different design ideas and present these options to the client. The next step is to create computer renderings with CAD programs and graphic design or photo imaging software; they also create 3-dimensional mock-ups to help clients visualize the final results.

A customary first step in the process is to present a concept to the client based on the needs and wants expressed by the client at the initial meeting. This concept may

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be a computer generated image, a three dimensional model or a drawing. The client and designer normally discuss the pros and cons of the presentation and decide what modifications are necessary. This process continues until a model that meets the client’s needs is finalized.

The next step is normally product testing. This phase may include putting the prototype through experiments to check its functionality, iron out design problems or make improvements. Consumer testing or focus groups are also commonly used to get feedback on the product features and usability.

Regardless of the path an industrial designer takes, his creativity is his greatest asset. He is also required to be proficient in computer aided design concepts and applications. Excellent communication skills are required for him to effectively exchange ideas with clients.

Career Skills

Industrial design is a combination of art and engineering; drawing skills, creativity and technical knowledge are critical. Industrial designers must have a good sense of color, balance and proportion, as well as good verbal and written communication skills.

Analytical skills. Industrial designers use logic or reasoning skills to study consumers and recognize the need for new products.

Artistic ability. Industrial designers sketch their initial design ideas, which are used later to create prototypes. As such, designers must be able to express their design through illustration.

Computer skills. Industrial designers use computer-aided design software to develop their designs and create prototypes.

Creativity. Industrial designers must be innovative in their designs and the ways in which they integrate existing technologies into their new product.

Interpersonal skills. Industrial designers must develop cooperative working relationships with clients and colleagues who specialize in related disciplines. Mechanical skills. Industrial designers must understand how products are engineered, at least for the types of products that they design.

Problem-solving skills. Industrial designers identify complex design problems such as the need, size, and cost of a product, anticipate production issues, develop alternatives, evaluate options, and implement solutions.

Task 2. Read the text once again and create own text entitled “Industrial Designer Job Duties”:

Text 3

Task to the text. Read the text ant tell about the major steps of industrial design. Then compare with the steps of industrial design in Russia.

.

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New Product Design Process: 6 Major Steps Involved

1. Idea Generation:

The design process begins with understanding the customers and their needs. Ideas for new products can come from a variety of sources both within and outside the firm. Internal sources include employees, research and development, market research sales force and reverse engineering.

The external sources include customers, legislation, environment, technology and strategic position of the organisation. Competitors are also the source of ideas for new products or services. Perceptual maps, bench marking and reverse engineering can help companies learn from their competitors.

Perceptual maps helps to compare customer perceptions of a company’s products with competitor’s products. It is a visual method of comparing customer perceptions of different product or services:

1.Bench marking refers to finding the best in class product or process, measuring the performance of your product or process against it and making recommendations for improvement based on the results.

2.Reverse engineering refers to carefully dismantling and inspecting competitors products to look for design features that can be incorporated to improve one’s own products.

Each of these sources gives a different emphasis on the requirements and importance of idea generation.

2. Screening Ideas:

The purpose of screening ideas is to eliminate those ideas that do not appear to have high potential and so avoid the costs incurred at subsequent stages. Using group of people, proposals would be supported by graphics, models and an outline specification and judged against a set of criteria such as necessity to the firms survival, role in filling out an existing product/service, degree of overlap with existing products and services, utilizing existing processes and capabilities, impact on overall sales and profits of the company.

To have a better evaluation of ideas, each of the dimensions of the ideas is scored on a 0-10 scale and each dimension is attached weights as per these dimensions. The resulting aggregate score helps in deciding which idea to progress and which idea should be dropped.

3. Feasibility Study:

Initial screening of the ideas is designed to stop the ideas, which are unsuitable for further considerations. Feasibility study consists of a market analysis, an economic analysis, and technical and strategic analysis.

Text 4

Task 1. Read the text and answer the questions:

1. What are the reasons for industrial design to become more important?

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2.What drives the development of industrial design?

3.What are the main criteria to create new properties and characteristics?

4.What materials are they striving to use? What does it mean?

5.Which criteria which also play an important role in the development of materials?

6.What materials are used in the rubber industry and why?

New materials important in industrial design

Industrial design will, in my opinion, become more and more important. There are several reasons for this.

To start with, design is about more than just appearance – the decoration and visual appeal. It is about the knowledge of how to construct, develop and produce intelligent products. "Intelligent" means a combination of function, sensible production methods, sustainable material use and of course an attractive and useful interface. All these qualities are necessary to design good products. And designers who are at once observers, engineers and "poets" are well suited to lead the way.

Another factor is that competition between producers drives industrial design development. Design is seen as a "plus": the added value that enables producers to sell good products with in terms of use, function and aesthetics in an increasingly competitive market.

Finally consumers know more and more about design and its importance to the overall quality of a product, and therefore demand products with good design.

As I see it, the development of industrial design is driven by criteria such as minimizing environmental impact, sustainability, the need for lightweight construction, reduction of components and the integration of functions. As experts in new materials and technologies for the development of innovative products, I and my colleagues work closely with international research institutes in our projects. By connecting scientific research and product design we are able to develop new strategies, concepts and products.

Technical innovation, cost and environmental issues are the main criteria when it comes to the properties and characteristics that we are seeking for. And as a consequence we are striving for materials that are thinner, lighter, biodegradable and more "intelligent" in terms of having integrated functionality.

This means materials that combine properties in the most efficient way; materials that can react to their surroundings and the environment by measuring and responding; materials whose characteristics can be transformed by various processes into, completely different materials. Such combinations are more an integration than a lamination. The reason for such materials are functionality, a reduction in the number of components needed (which means they require less assembly) and the integration of ergonomic needs. Examples include ceramic paper, wood foam, metal foam, ceramic foam, paper foam and metallized plastics (metal particles within the plastic) all of which combine the advantages of two or more materials into one new material.

Maximizing characteristics such as safety, resistance to strain and abrasion, flexibility and temperature resistance as well as minimizing weight, cost and density are some of the criteria which also play an important role in the development of

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materials. Materials with one or more of these "optimal" properties can open up new markets and provide a product with additional functionality.

Simultaneously new technologies enable faster processing, less waste and pollution and reduce the expense of machinery and tools. All of which increases flexibility and enables faster responses to rapid market changes and demands, quicker assembly of prototypes and even custom-made products being manufactured individually. In the rubber industry the trend is to use thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) because of their fantastic mechanical properties, such as shock absorbtion and above all their haptic feel and flexibility.

In the future, and this is not a fantasy but something you can already see developing if you look into laboratories and research institutes all over the world, biodegradable and intelligent biomimetic materials will replace less ecologically sound materials.

Task 2. Read the text once again and create own text entitled “Materials important in industrial design”.

Text 5

Task to the text. Read the text ant tell about Peter Behrens, his life and creative work.

Peter Behrens

Hamburg 1868 - Berlin 1940

Peter Behrens is one of the most influential 20th-century German designers. At the beginning of the century, he brought forth outstanding works in painting, architecture, graphic design and industrial design, which exerted a paramount influence in all these various fields, opening up uncharted territory for the generations to come. He is viewed as the founder of modern objective industrial architecture and modern industrial design.

Born in Hamburg in 1868, Peter Behrens studied at the Hamburg Kunstgewerbeschule [School for the Applied Arts] from 1886 to 1889 before attending the Kunstschule in Karlsruhe and the Düss eldorf Art Academy. From 1890 he worked as a painter and graphic artist in Munich, where he joined the Jugendstil movement; in 1893 he was a founding member of the Munich Secession.

He produced woodcuts, coloured illustrations, designs for book bindings and crafts objects entirely shaped by the Jugendstil formal language. In 1897 Behrens joined forces with Hermann Obrist, August Endell, Bruno Paul, Richard Riemerschmid and Bernhard Pankok to found the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst und Handwerk in Munich to produce handmade utilitarian objects. In 1898 Peter Behrens collaborated on designing the Berlin journal "Pan" and produced his first furniture designs.

In 1899 Peter Behrens was appointed by Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of HesseDarmstadt to the Mathildenhöhe artists' colony the Grand Duke had just established

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in Darmstadt. There Behrens designed and built his first house, his own dwelling. Designed as a total work of art, "Haus Behrens" caused quite a stir; Behrens himself designed the architecture and the interior with all its appointments and furnishings down to the last detail. In 1901-02 Peter Behrens taught at the Düsseldorf K unstgewerbeschule. In 1903 he left Mathildenhöhe, serving until 1907 as the direc tor of the Düsseldorf Kunstgewerbeschule. In 1906 Peter Behrens received his first commission from AEG (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft) to desi gn advertizing material. Emil Rathenau hired Behrens as an artistic consultant to work on a wide range of projects. In 1908-09 Behrens designed the AEG Turbinenhalle in Berlin, a concrete, steel and glass factory building with an outspoken agenda. In addition to architecture (housing for working men and their families), Behrens also designed household electrical appliances, standardizing the forms of their components and thus making them interchangeable, which rationalized production. Further, he was in charge of designing sales rooms, catalogues, price lists, etc, thus using design for the first time to create a unified appearance as the sign of corporate identity. This collaboration lasted until 1914.

In October 1907 Peter Behrens joined Peter Bruckmann, Josef Maria Olbrich, Fritz Schumacher, Richard Riemerschmid, and Hermann Muthesius to found the Deutscher Werkbund. Like the Munich Vereinigte Werkstätten (see above), the Werkbund was inspired by the British Arts and Crafts movement. Its aim was to promote crafts skills while leading into industrial production, where standardization and an objective formal language were to achieve the same high quality standard as that of handmade goods. That same year, 1907, saw Peter Behrens founding a large architectural and design practice in Berlin. Walter Gropius (up to 1910), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (190811), and Le Corbusier (1910-11) also worked there. This joint studio was very productive and numerous architectural commissions were realized, including the German embassy in St. Petersburg (1911-12) and the IG Farben Höchst headquarters in Frankfurt (1920-25), which showed the influence of Expressionism.

In 1926 Peter Behrens designed "New Ways", a private dwelling in Northampton, which is regarded as an early example of the International Modern style. Further, Peter Behrens designed china, glass objects and patterned linoleum flooring for various companies. One of his last commissions, in 1938, was to plan new AEG headquarters in Berlin. Peter also continued to teach, heading the architecture department of the Vienna Akademie der Bildenden Kün ste from 1922 to 1936.

For the rest of his life he was head of the architecture department at the Preußische Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

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Text 6

Task to the text. Read the text ant tell about modern design in the United States.

Modern design in the United States

Despite what is often seen as German leadership in creating industrial design as a profession, the United States has an equally compelling claim to being industrial design’s parent country. The United States emerged from World War I (1914–18) physically undamaged; in contrast, many European cities and industrial facilities were not only damaged but in some cases downright decimated by those years of war and by the subsequent socialist and communist revolutions. In some ways the radical sociopolitical change of the interwar years catalyzed equally radical changes in attitudes toward design, as can be seen in the growing popularity of the Bauhaus within Weimar Germany. European society was in a state of turmoil and radical reform, but the United States, despite its share of social unrest, was somewhat more stable. During the war the country had established a reputation for large industrial production, and afterward its wartime factories were adapted for the civilian consumer economy. With this great output capability, most probably, came a tendency toward planned obsolescence. This term was supposedly coined after World War II by American industrial designers and writers to indicate industry’s desire to produce consumer items that would be replaced even before their actual utility expired. Although the concept is often linked with the second half of the 20th century, it is likely that American industrialists saw this profit-making opportunity well before then.

The United States at this time was thus ripe for the development of the industrial design profession. In fact, the U.S. Patent Office recognized the term industrial designer in 1913, and, as in Europe, organizations were formed to unite the visual arts professionals who helped create consumer products and environments. The American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (founded in 1927), for instance, was followed by the American Designers Institute (1938) and the Society of Industrial Designers (1944), all of which eventually merged to form the Industrial Designers Society of America (1965). As with the Deutscher Werkbund and most professional organizations, these served to validate the profession in the view of the public and to facilitate communication among their members.

One of the first major public expressions of the newfound commitment to showcasing well-designed consumer products was Macy’s department store’s Art in Trade Exposition (1927), which was designed by the scenic designer and Theatre Guild founder Lee Simonson and owed a major conceptual debt to the Arts Décoratifs exposition that had taken place in Paristwo years earlier. Throughout the rest of the interwar years, other exhibitions were likewise mounted to inform the

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