Metodología de diseño de máquinas apropiadas para contextos de comunidades en desarrollo
- Autores: Maria Elena Blanco Romero
- Directores de la Tesis: Carles Riba i Romeva (dir. tes.), Laia Ferrer Marti (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2018
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Joan Roca (presid.), Jordi Martínez Miralles (secret.), Victoria Reyes García (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Sostenibilidad por la Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
The design of industrial equipment or product in a developed country is a process characterized by creativity and, at the same time, conditioned by the fulfillment of requirements imposed by the customer, users, market and/or competition. The complexity and importance of the design process have motivated many studies and the establishment of different methodologies to help design teams to guide the process, focus on creativity and achieve the necessary requirements. These methodologies take into account many aspects in order to make design decisions: market studies, analyses of user needs, generation of specifications, proposals and evaluation of alternatives, etc. It is striking, however, that all of them assume implicitly that the product or equipment will be developed, manufactured or used in an industrialized context. This implies specific environment characteristics: highly availability of energy resources, materials and technology, reduction of time and costs, high-trained operators and users, etc. These characteristics condition the design process in a non-manifest way: it is not necessary to specify the context because it is taken for granted.
However, there are projects in which the product designed is not aimed at a developed context: its main objective is to promote growth and improve the quality of life of a developing community. These projects are framed within the so-called appropriate technologies: technologies that allow people to escape poverty, improve their economic situation and cover their basic needs with the resources available in their context in a sustainable manner. In these projects, the characteristics of the context are often key for equipment or machine design: for example, the training and culture of the users, the availability of materials, the technological and energetic resources available or the geographical and climatic conditions. Equipment design projects to facilitate or improve agricultural processes in developing countries fall within the scope of appropriate technologies as they help to improve the productivity and living conditions of farmers. Their design has to be adapted to the conditions of the context to ensure a correct appropriation of the equipment to the community.
Literature on appropriate technologies and design methodologies shows that there is no clear and specific procedure for the design of appropriate machines. Instead, it shows that appropriate machine design is usually structured along classical design lines. However, no stage is included to help explain the context and its characteristics in a methodical way.
In this thesis, a design methodology for appropriate machines in the agricultural field is proposed taking as a basis the study of two real cases of design of agricultural machines in two different contexts. This methodology has as a purpose to include an adequate analysis of the context to the design process indicated by the classical methodologies in mechanical engineering. Special attention is paid to the initial phases of the design and the procedures of classical methodologies are extended, incorporating a stage of own entity to carry out this analysis. The methodology provides a tool that helps design teams document the context as well as the needs and characteristics of the community in a comprehensive, systematic, easy and orderly manner. This tool contemplates aspects related to the environment, the users, the infrastructures and the technological conditions of the environment and the agricultural process that the equipment develops.
The proposed methodology is validated by applying it to the real cases studied initially, to a completed project that follows this methodology (an agricultural waste shredder in Ecuador) and to a project of the conceptual design of a cane peeler in two different contexts, Nepal and Ecuador.
