Conference Session

Capstone Courses

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Manish Paliwal, College of New Jersey; Bijan Sepahpour, College of New Jersey

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

APPROACH FOR BETTER IMPLEMENTATION OF CAPSTONE SENIOR DESIGN PROJECTSAbstractPrimary expectations from a Senior Design Project is defined by ABET with an emphasis onproduct, process, and professionalism. In principle, the requirements for a senior design projectshould include development of student creativity, use of open-ended problems, development anduse of design methodology, formulation of design problems, alternative solutions, and detailedsystem description. Constraints such as economic factors, safety, reliability, ethics, and socialimpact should also be included.However, it is debated how the process and/or the design product should be assessed, and howthe teams should be formed and function for successful project

Conference Session

Capstone Courses

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Blair T. Allison, Grove City College; Stephen Ludwick, Aerotech, Inc., and University of Pittsburgh; William P. Birmingham, Grove City College

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

AC 2012-4239: A MECHATRONICS CAPSTONE PROJECT WITH AN IN-TERDISCIPLINARY TEAM AND AN INDUSTRIAL PARTNERDr. Blair T. Allison, Grove City College Blair T. Allison is professor and Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Grove City College. He teaches courses in engineering design, mechanics of materials, materials science, control systems, and finite element analysis. Areas of research interest include the modeling and control of metal forming processes, manufacturing automation and control, and dimensional control of components and assemblies. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.S.M.E. degree from Carnegie Mellon

Conference Session

Capstone Courses

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Martin Edin Grimheden, Royal Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

. This is due to the emphasis onearly prototyping, quick feedback and incremental development. It still might not be thefavorable method for use in large scale industrial development projects where formalprocedures might still be preferred, but the pedagogical advantages in mechatronics educationare valuable. Incremental development and rapid prototyping for example gives manyopportunities to reflect and improve. The Scrum focus on self-organizing teams also providesa platform to practice project organization, by empowering students to take responsibility forthe product development process.Among the results of this study, it is shown that it is possible and favorable to integrate Scrumin a mechatronics capstone course and that this can enhance

Conference Session

Capstone Courses

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Raghu Echempati, Kettering University; Vipul Laddha, Kettering University; Sualp Ozel P.E., Autodesk, Inc.; James Herzing

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

one end of a freightcar or a commuter car used in railway industry. Usually, they consists of several pieces ofsteel tubes and other steel members welded together to form a rigid frame structure. Froma safety perspective, the car-truck stands are to be designed carefully, but at the sametime due to their possible large volume of production, this structure needs to be optimizedfrom strength and cost perspectives besides other parameters such as long life, etc. Thepurpose of this paper is to conduct virtual experiments for the optimal design of adifferent car-truck stand structures using Autodesk Simulation program as a CAE tool.The idea is to include this work as a part of final project in a traditional finite elementanalysis (FEA) course

Conference Session

Active and Project-based Learning

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John-David S. Yoder, Ohio Northern University; James P. Schmiedeler, University of Notre Dame; Michael Milo Stanisic, University of Notre Dame

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

better.At the University of Notre Dame, a robotic football competition was initiated in the spring of2008 as the main design project for the capstone course for all senior mechanical engineeringstudents. An advantage of a robotic football game is that the robustness of the students designsand manufacturing skills are tested in a way that they are not in FIRST or related competitions –the designs must consider being able to withstand significant impacts. Furthermore, it takesadvantage of the high (and growing) popularity of American football on college campuses.After repeating the competition in 2009, the coordinating faculty desired to reach out and includeanother university in the next competition. To do this, it was decided to invite a team of

Conference Session

Active and Project-based Learning

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Garrett Miles Clayton, Villanova University; Teresa Genevieve Wojcik, Villanova University; Aleksandra Radlińska, Villanova University; Noelle K. Comolli, Villanova University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

require a significant amount of design practice, along with proper reinforcement – onesuggestion is that several simple design problems precede the larger capstone design project [7].In addition, design and other engineering subjects are best learnt through hands on activelearning, e.g. project based learning [6, 8]. Therefore, the integration of impromptu designexercises into all aspects of the curriculum is motivated by the above research findings.In addition, the authors have found that these projects have a number of other advantagesincluding: • Using these hands-on activities give students concrete examples of the issues being discussed in class – e.g. students go through an impromptu design exercise (where they design and

Conference Session

Learning and Assessment I

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert G. Ryan, California State University, Northridge

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012 Assessment of a New Design Stem Course SequenceAbstractIn Fall 2009, the Mechanical Engineering Department at California State University, Northridgeimplemented significant changes to the curriculum by creating a new course sequence focusedon design. The course sequence is distributed throughout the four years of the program, andculminates in the traditional capstone senior design course. One of the features of the newsequence was the requirement of a team project in each course, including oral design reviewsdocumenting the projects’ progress. Enabling our students to continuously develop anddemonstrate skills related to design and communication was the main incentive behind

Conference Session

Laboratory Innovations

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Claire Yu Yan, University of British Columbia; Carolyn Labun, University of British Columbia

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

, the School ofEngineering received its first accreditation from the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board(CEAB).The creation of a new School of Engineering offered an exciting opportunity to stress integrationand design from the outset. During the first two years, which are common to all three disciplines,all students study together, in an effort to both teach and show students the integration ofengineering concepts desired by industry and recognized by many as ideal. In addition to takingtraditional engineering courses, students (in both first and second year, and again in the fourthyear capstone design course) work in multi-disciplinary teams on major design projects thatintegrate technical knowledge and metaskills. As noted by

Conference Session

Trends in Mechanical Engineering: Trends and Tools

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Timothy A. Doughty, University of Portland; Steven O'Halloran, University of Portland

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

use of flexible, affordable, and accessible data acquisition platforms,undergraduate students are becoming more and more familiar with the design of experiments andthe topics associated with data collection. For this study a self-guided tutorial was developed tointroduce the topics of data acquisition. Students at various stages of their undergraduatecurriculum are asked to work through the tutorial. This tutorial is also used in conjunction with across-curricular project involving numerical simulation and experimental validation of heattransfer topics of conduction and convection. Students were surveyed, both prior to and shortlyafter the tutorial, to determine the perceived value of the exercise in the context of theireducation and future

Conference Session

Learning and Assessment I

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sriram Sundararajan, Iowa State University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

particular map.Once all the mappings were established, the next task was to determine which outcomes shouldbe assessed in order to be able to evaluate attainment of student outcomes. The intent was tospread the outcomes assessment across the curriculum and avoid unnecessary redundancy in datacollection. In this regard, the UGEC determined that assessment would be performed in ninecore courses ranging from the sophomore to the senior level, including the capstone designexperience courses. Page 25.104.6

Conference Session

Trends in Mechanical Engineering: Curricula and Courses

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Allan T. Kirkpatrick P.E., Colorado State University; Scott Danielson P.E., Arizona State University, Polytechnic; Thomas Perry P.E., American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

Page 25.209.6design/build/test spine in which a design course is present in the freshmen, sophomore, andjunior years, where student teams tackle increasingly difficult design and build projects. Ideally,this design spine would be multidisciplinary in nature, providing the students with multipleexperiences working with people from other majors as they progress through their curriculum.This sequence is completed with a yearlong senior capstone design course that has a focus onsystem design, building, testing, and operation.Professional Skills -- We recommend the development of professional skills in the engineeringgraduate to produce engineering leadership characteristics required for implementingengineering solutions to help solve the complex

Conference Session

Learning and Assessment III

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Firas Akasheh, Tuskegee University; Raghu Echempati, Kettering University; Anca L. Sala, Baker College, Flint

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

61%Figure 2. Student survey results regarding the improved learning due to experimental homeworkintervention.Kettering University:The first course is the 4-credit Machine Design where the class work and the homeworkinterventions were applied for many years with positive results. This course is a pre-requisite tothe senior Capstone course and hence the student population is mixed – some are juniors whilefew others are seniors. Ideally, this course should be taken right after they take the pre-requisiteSolid Mechanics course. However, due to the type of curriculum at Kettering University, manystudents of the class had challenges with retaining the Solid Mechanics concepts. Theintervention method helped addressing this issue to some extent as

Conference Session

Trends in Mechanical Engineering: Curricula and Courses

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lisa Abrams, Ohio State University; James William Altschuld, Ohio State University; Blaine W. Lilly, Ohio State University; Daniel A. Mendelsohn, Ohio State University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

the labs and hands-onexperiences.This paper focuses on the new sophomore level design course which has been piloted as anabbreviated ten-week quarter long version in Autumn 2011 and Winter 2012. The sophomorecourse fills, in part, the major gap in design education that exists between the fundamentals ofengineering course sequence (and its honors equivalent, both of which serve as a prerequisite tothe major) and the senior-year capstone design course. And while the first year course sequencesinclude a design-build project, there exists a wide variance in the machine skills and experienceof entry-level Mechanical Engineering students. This new sophomore course attempts to level-set the practical knowledge of machining among students in addition

Conference Session

Learning and Assessment I

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John K. Estell, Ohio Northern University; John-David S. Yoder, Ohio Northern University; Briana B. Morrison, Southern Polytechnic State University; Fong K. Mak, Gannon University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

Conference Session

Thermodynamics, Fluids, and Heat Transfer

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kyle A. Watson, University of the Pacific; Ashland O. Brown, University of the Pacific; Rachelle Kisst Hackett, University of the Pacific; Alexis Pham, University of the Pacific

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

AC 2012-3043: FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS LEARNING MODULESFOR AN UNDERGRADUATE HEAT TRANSFER COURSE: IMPLEMEN-TATION AND ASSESSMENTProf. Kyle A. Watson, University of the Pacific Kyle Watson earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Villanova University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University. He has been a faculty member at the University of the Pacific since 2003 and has taught undergraduate courses in thermodynamics, heat transfer, combustion, air-conditioning, dynamics, and senior capstone design.Dr. Ashland O. Brown, University of the Pacific Ashland O. Brown is professor of mechanical engineering, University of the Pacific, and Principal Inves- tigator. He