Pearson

Higher Nationals in
Engineering
ASSESSMENT BRIEF
Unit: 39 Further Mathematics
For use with the following qualifications:
Pearson BTEC Level 4 Higher National Certificate and Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Engineering
Pearson BTEC Level 4 Higher National Certificate and Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Mechanical
Engineering
Brief Number: 3 of 4

First teaching from September 2017

Issue 2
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2017
 Higher National Certificate/Diploma in
Engineering
Assessment Brief
Student Name/ID Number

Unit Number and Title 39 Further Mathematics

Academic Year 2019-20

Unit Tutor Mustafa Hasan

Assignment Title Further Mathematics 3

Issue Date 24/10/2019

Submission Date 03/11/2019

IV Name & Date 23/10/2019 Dr Ghassan Tashtoush

Submission Format

The submission is in the form of an MS Word document, where you provide the responses to the problems
provided.

HNC/HND Engineering 3
Scenario

You are an Engineer in CSSEC. CSSEC has been instructed to build a water reservoir for a desalination plant
by a government contract. Your manager has asked you to produce some calculations for a project so that
you can present them next week to non-technical members of the team.

Task 1 a)

The team has produced a complex equation and are struggling to find the roots of the equation, show them
two different iterative techniques, then show them that they are both equally valid methods.

i) Find the root using Newton – Raphson for

20x4 + 1.125x3 - 11.36x2 – 0.284 =0

4
Near x= 5 to 4 s.f.

ii) Find the root between 1 and 2 to 3 d.p. using the bisection method
3x3 + 30x2 + 24x -150 = 0

Find the roots of the following equation using the two different iterative techniques used in i) and ii)

x4 – 5x3 + 4x2 – x +13 = 0

Task 1 (b)

Usually at a dam the energy is stored in the form of hydro potential as producing the electricity and storing
it in batteries is too expensive, the team wants you to run a simulation with a small-scale battery to
understand the capacity such a massive battery would require.

i) Estimate using Simpson’s rule, the capacity of a battery with a recorded current(I) over a 7-hour
period with results shown below. Noted: the capacity of a battery is measured by ∫ 𝐼 2 𝑡 𝑑𝑡

Time/h 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Current/A 25.0 27.4 36.2 38 28.7 29.6 25 26.5

HNC/HND Engineering 4
 ii) It is known that electrical components do not always match their nominal value due to many
reasons. The team designs a circuit such that it needs a specific component value, the manager
wants to know how sure we can be that the variation in the nominal value will produce
acceptable circuit behaviour? You decide to integrate probability density function in order to
determine the confidence interval. For the oscillator to have its frequency within five percent of
the teams target of 2 kHz, to calculate likelihood of this happening we can simply find the total
area under the normal distribution for the given range:
2.9 x2

1      1
e 2
dx
 2.15 2
a) Find the frequency by using a 2-segment trapezoidal rule.
b) What is the true error (err) for part (a)

Task 1 (c)

i) Running another simulation for the team you take a 5500-litre tank which contains 1600 litres of
water with 20kgs of salt dissolved in it. You pump water into the tank at a rate of 15 litres/hour.
If a well-mixed solution exits the tank at a rate of 9 litres per/hour. Calculate how much salt
3
would be in the tank when it overflows given that the tank has a salt concentration of 7 (5 +
𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝑡))𝑘𝑔𝑠/𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑟𝑒

ii) This time your setup a 4000 litre holding tank that catches runoff. The runoff is from a chemical
process, the 4000 litre tank initially has 1500 litres of water with 4 kgs of a pollutant dissolved in
it. The polluted water runs off into the 3000 litre tank at a rate of 9 litres/hour and contains
18kg/litre of pollutant. A well-mixed solution leaves the tank at a rate of 9litres/hour. The runoff
is cut off once the amount of pollution in the 4000 litre holding tank reaches 700kg and fresh
water will enter the tank at a lower rate of 4litres/hour and the outflow rate is increased to
12litres/hour. Calculate the amount of pollutant in the tank at any time (t)

HNC/HND Engineering 5
Task 1 (d)
The manager wants you to explain to the non-technical members of the team the short falls and errors of
the following numerical estimation methods:
a) Bisection method
b) Newton-Raphson
c) Trapezium rule
d) Simpson’s rule

Task 1 (e)
The communication team is working on the signal to be used for communication. During experimentation
they were able to generate the function given below. You have been assigned the following graph. You
must now use the graph given below to find the equation for it.

HNC/HND Engineering 6
 Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria

Learning Outcome Pass Merit Distinction

LO3 Approximate P6 Estimate solutions of M3 Solve engineering D3 Critique the use of

solutions of sketched functions using problems and formulate numerical estimation
contextualised examples a graphical estimation mathematical models methods, commenting on
with graphical and method using graphical and their applicability and the
numerical methods numerical integration accuracy of the methods
P7 Calculate the roots of
an equation using two
different iterative
techniques
P8 Determine the
numerical integral of
engineering functions
using two different
methods

HNC/HND Engineering 7