Vancouver, BC
June 26, 2011
June 26, 2011
June 29, 2011
2153-5965
Design in Engineering Education
10
22.36.1 - 22.36.10
10.18260/1-2--17318
https://peer.asee.org/17318
4488
Robert Marlor is an Associate Professor in the Engineering Technology Department at Northern Michigan University. He received a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Structural Engineering) from Michigan Technological University in 2003. He is the faculty advisor for NMU SAE Baja team.
A DESIGN PROJECT FOR A MECHANICS & STATICS COURSEWhen teaching engineering design concepts in engineering technology programs, instructors arechallenged to create realistic, hands on, intuitive design experiences at an early stage in thestudents’ development. This paper describes a balsa wood truss design competition used in aStatics & Mechanics course to motivate the learning of the concepts of static equilibrium andtruss analysis.Balsa wood bridge projects have been used to promote learning at several educational levels. Inthis particular student design project, the student must first analyze the forces in each member ofa truss, then determine the cross-sectional dimensions of each truss member and finally build andload test the truss. Over the course of more than twenty semesters, the details of this projecthave been refined to produce a realistic design experience that solidifies the learning of trussanalysis by requiring the student to both design and build a model truss.In this paper, detailed information will be presented on how to successfully incorporate thisproject experience into a Statics class in a time efficient manner.
Marlor, R. A. (2011, June), A Design Project for a Mechanics & Statics Course Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--17318
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015