Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Pawan Tyagi; Christine Newman

Fundamentals by Four Weeks Long EngineeringInnovation Summer ProgramAbstract: Preparing high school students for engineering disciplines is crucial for the sustainablescientific and technological developments in the USA. This paper discusses a precollege program, whichnot only exposes students to various engineering disciplines but also enables them to considerengineering as their profession. The four-week long “Engineering Innovation (EI)” course is offeredevery year to high school students by the Center for Educational Outreach, Whiting School ofEngineering, Johns Hopkins University. The EI program is designed to develop problem-solving skillsthrough extensive hands on engineering experiments and projects. A team consisting of an instructor

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

J.B. Conrad; J.M. Ryan; C.J. Egelhoff; E.M. Odom

step to theapproach presented by Professor Ju in his course notes and in an article [1]. ProfessorJu’s approach is based on Castigliano’s Theorem and the use of Heaviside stepfunctions to write the moment equation. If performed by hand, this approach isalgebraically intense. However, the boundary conditions are embedded in theformulation, and once created, the formulation is ready for 178179180181182183184185186187

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Raymond Addabbo

experiment and theory. Many diversephenomena in engineering and science are too expensive or dangerous to study in alaboratory and can only be studied using numerical simulations.The course Introduction to Programming using Matlab (CSC 215) taught a Vaughn Collegeserves to address several issues. The fundamental goal of the course is to teachprogramming by integrating different parts of the engineering curriculum. Theory taught inother courses can be verified or questioned using numerical simulations. In order toaccomplish this goals, several skill sets need to be developed. This paper addresses theseskill sets and how they are developed.2 Outline of CSC 215CSC 215 is a three credit required course for engineering students and an elective in

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Frank M. Croft

that is verychallenging for the students, but also very rewarding. In the first course, Engr H191, students learnthe fundamentals of graphics through sketching and use of Autodesk Inventor, a GeometricModeling Program. They are introduced to hands-on labs and are required to do extensive labreport writing. There is a project in which two person teams design and build a cardboardmechanism (a bridge for a 16” span, or a Christmas ornament shipping carton). There is acompetition involving loading the mechanisms until they break and bonus points are awarded to thewinners. The second course, Engr H192, involves C and C++ programming. It also involvesadditional labs that require the students to do extensive lab reports. Another design project is

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Suzanne Keilson

. One class was devoted to a guest lesson by thefine arts faculty member on fundamental elements of “visual literacy” which included what tolook for in terms of visual consistency and where and how to store, find, and maintain librariesof digital images. Simple techniques such as creating borders around images andunderstanding pixel size, density, and image aspect ratio helped to improve studentpresentations. The design of presentations and effective communication and its associatedmechanics are fundamental skills for all educated people in the 21st century, just as themechanics of writing different forms such as a memo or an internal report are an expected partand parcel of a professional engineers toolkit. Edward Tufte prominently among

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Daniel Schmalzel

education in a structured classroomenvironment learning the fundamentals of their discipline. Once a solid medical, or in this caseengineering, foundation has been laid students are ready to put their knowledge to use. Theconcept of applying knowledge learned in the classroom is by no means unique, but RowanUniversity’s uniqueness is the stage at which these applications of engineering fundamentals areapplied. Many engineering curricula culminate in a Senior Design during the final semester, orpossibly beginning in the fall of the senior year, and ending in the spring with the final report. Bythe final year of a student’s education only a fraction of the many lessons possibly gained from sucha project are achieved. By this time a student has taken

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Radian Belu

end of the program (“final” year). In time, as subjects mature, it is not unknown foryesterday's cutting-edge activity soon to be relegated to an earlier year of study as the topic 60matures and is seen to be "fundamental" to the knowledge base of the modern engineer. Thisinjection of new material obviously puts everything else under considerable pressure andinevitably some of the really "mature" subjects are either allocated less time, or worse, aredropped all together. One significant example is Electromagnetics. The fact that a subject whichliterally underpins the rest of electrical engineering can be discarded from curricula is a cause forgreat concern. However, it is not our intention here

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Sheikh Ghafoor; Stephen Canfield; Michael Kelley; Tristan Hill

practice. Transparencyin the programming applications can be achieved through programming the MCU in C that gavedirect control of memory and I/O registers, making it a good fit for electrical or computerengineering students. When the programming platform is Matlab, a greater level of abstractionfor the input/output registers is easily achieved through simple functions, while allowing the 313students to directly control input and output devices. For the C programming approach, acommercial integrated development environment (IDE) [17] serves as the program editor andcross compiler to interfaces with the MCU. For the Matlab programming, students write theirprogram in the usual fashion as a script in an m

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Richard Y. Chiou; Michael G. Mauk; M. Eric Carr; Bret Davis

is not sufficient tosimulate only the robots’ movements.Figure 3: Component Model, logical I/O model, and cell 3D model for simulation 81All of these components must be able to communicate with each other through variedinputs and outputs. This is commonly performed today through a PLC, which usesprogramming to emulate mechanical switches and relays. Systems consisting of inputsand outputs do not require structured testing to be constructed, but for more complexsystems, testing the designed PLC code becomes vital. PLCStudio works in conjunctionwith STEP 7 to allow the user to not only fabricate a virtual 3D representation of thefactory floor, but also write and test the PLC ladder logic in a

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Harvey Lyons

and introductory engineering technologycourses. The entering students were exposed to a multi-dimensional course whose basic purposewas to efficiently provide not only an understanding of what is involved in the ‘design process’performed in industry but also the opportunity to employ and develop those design functions andskills at the very outset of the students’ undergraduate experience. The several components ofthe course were integrated to include:  Use of technical resources  Technical report writing and oral delivery  Research into the functions of technical societies  Comprehensive discussions of fundamental manufacturing processes followed by design projects that would employ a given process towards the redesign

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Ted E. Batchman

and most of allwhat went into manufacturing a mechanical product. Do we worry about manufacturability in mostof our programs today? No! Especially not in electrical engineering. There are only 21 accreditedmanufacturing engineering programs in the U.S. today. Is it any wonder that most of ourmanufacturing is done elsewhere? As electrical engineers we had 10 credit hours in passive circuitsso that we had a good understanding (foundation) in basic electrical circuits and components. Thatsound foundation in passive electrical circuits has been reduced to 3 credit hours or less and we 30wonder why the students don’t understand many of the fundamentals. We practiced solving almostevery passive

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

KENNETH WADE JACKSON

theoreticalabstractions. Lastly, it might not be required to drill down quite as deeply forundergraduates. 378The Role of Information TechnologyAs a result of the information revolution, information technology will play anessential and ever changing role in the education of engineers. Characterizing therole of IT, even for the traditional engineering disciplines, is difficult because notonly is it continually evolving, but also because its use is highly variable both amongthe traditional disciplines and even within a single discipline. Notwithstanding thesedifficulties, the various engineering disciplines must try to leverage and balance therole of IT as it relates to their fundamental mission and to engineering science

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Radian Belu

, we started to propose a few miniprojects related to the renewable energy. While beginning with the 2009-2010 academic theauthor also proposed several senior design projects focusing on wind and solar/PV systems.From this perspective, these approaches of restructuring the power electronics course and addingrenewable energy projects to the senior project design courses are of critical importance insolidifying the fundamentals of power electronics and renewable energy into the curriculum andcreating the foundation for the planned renewable energy concentration.3.1 Capstone Project Design Course SequenceMET 421/422/423 (Senior Project Design) is a sequence of three-quarter capstone project designcourses required for all the BSET majors. The

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Donald D. Joye

for almost 15 yearsand has over 40 research publications. 432 NOW THAT COMPUTERS ARE HERE, WHAT DO WE DO IN LAB?ABSTRACT Focused on Chemical Engineering, the following paper is a discussion of strategies andcoping mechanisms for the onslaught of virtual laboratories many people are advocating forreplacing the traditional lab experience, which includes coming to grips with large scaleequipment used in the process industries. Yet, we also acknowledge the usefulness of computerdata acquisition and the like as desirable for the modern experience in lab, because this is theway industry now does it, more or less. However, experience with real equipment and itsoperation is invaluable to the

Collection

2011 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference

Authors

Richard Devon; Richard Schuhmann

always transforms society and the environment, sometimesto the extent of changing what it means to be human and the fundamental nature of theecosystem. Human spaces are now dominated by the sciences of the artificial (design), and thetechnological density of our lives steadily increases with ever increasing numbers of successes,failures, and learning curves in our culture. Design is the cornerstone of technology. Design ishow we solve our problems, fulfill our needs, shape our world, change the future, and create newproblems and new opportunities. From extraction to disposal in the life cycle of a product, thedesign process is where we make important decisions; the decisions that determine most of thefinal product cost, and the decisions that