Context: 18yr fresh out of high school and have started my undergraduate engineering course at my University.
For my first ever group project, we are asked to develop a fire extinguisher vehicle. The vehicle has 4 subsystems, or 4 parts that we need to focus on. The driving, structural, water delivery part and the controlling the vehicle part.
I am tasked to develop design options for the water delivery part. It obviously needs to have a water reservoir (container), tubing, pump and some nozzle. Then, I have to a develop design criteria for these components.
The problem is that I am struggling to develop specific criteria. For example, I can come up with sustainability, safety, maintainability, economic feasibility and on and on. We all know that a pump should have all those characteristics just like any other components in other subsystems (driving etc). But how can I be specific to MY WATER DELIVERY SUBSYSTEM? I can't say water efficacy is a design criteria since this is not a criteria for tubing, pump or nozzle.