Conference Session

Mechanics Education Programs and Projects

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Cliff Lissenden, Pennsylvania State University; Nicholas Salamon, Pennsylvania State University; Andrew Miller, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics

mustpractice divergent thinking to explore the entire design space, which is an immensely importantskill for developing creative and effective solutions. Learning design via a team-based designproject promotes cognitive skills, social skills, management skills, and positive personal traits.Design and development of an open ended design project is discussed. The team-based projectprogresses over approximately ten weeks in an elementary strength of materials course. Thisprovides a significant design experience for engineering students that helps bridge the gapbetween the first-year engineering design course and the capstone design project that engineeringstudents typically do in their senior year. The project requires student teams to: work together

Conference Session

Mechanics Education Programs and Projects

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sridhar Condoor, Saint Louis University, Parks College of Eng.; Sanjay Jayaram, Saint Louis University, Parks College of Eng.; Lawrence Boyer, Saint Louis University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics

in a state of rest or uniform motion, is afundamental course. The concepts in statics serve as the building blocks for future courses inengineering, mechanics of solids in particular. However, from our experience in teaching follow-on courses to statics, mechanics of solids, machine design, aircraft structures, aerospace andmechanical engineering capstone design courses, and finite element analysis, we found twofundamental disconnects present in some of the most popular statics textbooks: • Emphasis, perhaps overemphasis, of the role of vectors in analyzing structures. This may be attributed to a strong influence of physics in the texts. Then, the text-books in mechanics of solids do not even mention the vector concepts

Conference Session

Enhancing Mechanics Instruction

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gangbing Song, University of Houston; Mithun Singla, University of Houston; Christy Chang, University of Houston; Richard Bannerot, University of Houston

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics

ability ofpiezo materials to both deform under an electrical stimulus and to generate a voltage under amechanical stimulus allows them to act as both a solid state actuator and sensor. Further, thinsheets of PZT can be surface bonded or otherwise structurally integrated into a system, allowingfor easy implementation in a dynamic system, and the nearly linear proportionality between themechanical strain and the applied/sensed voltage allows for easy control of PZT behavior.The Flexible Beam SystemA horizontal and a vertical flexible beam have been developed as educational tools. The verticalbeam presented here is based on the horizontal beam system developed in previous work 9, 10 andwas developed as a senior capstone design project. The vertical

Conference Session

Anything New in Dynamics?

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Thomas Nordenholz, California Maritime Academy

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics

LaboratoryAbstractThis paper describes a relatively simple method in which planar rigid body motion can bemeasured and analyzed in the context of an upper division mechanical engineering laboratorycourse. The overall intention of this work is to help facilitate upper division level laboratoryprojects in dynamics. Such projects are intended to provide students with the opportunity to i)apply and reinforce their knowledge of dynamics, ii) learn and practice modern experimentalmethods used to make and assess motion measurements, and iii) if possible, compare theoreticaland measured results.The instrumentation involves the use of two inexpensive sensors – a dual axis accelerometer anda rate gyro – and a data acquisition system (such as LABVIEW). The accelerometer