Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 1566

Optimal Design of a Thermal Recuperator

Gilbert L. Wedekind, Christopher J. Kobus Department of Mechanical Engineering Oakland University, Rochester, MI 48309

Abstract

This paper describes the final design project for the senior level Fluid and Thermal System Design course, which is a precursor to the Capstone Design Project at Oakland University. The Fluid and Thermal System Design course is geared to taking students through the entire taxonomy of the design process; from knowledge, comprehension and application, to analysis, synthesis and finally evaluation. The recuperator design is the final design project of the course, and involves all of the aforementioned steps of the design process. The project is carried out during the last five weeks of the semester, working in teams made up of three to four students, with one being the team leader. Results of the students’ design experiences will be presented in this paper.

I. Introduction

It has become increasingly obvious in recent years that graduating seniors from accredited institutions have been lacking in exposure to the totality of the design process. Although some aspects of the design process have been intensively covered piecewise in senior-level courses, there was a need to integrate all of the design steps together into a cohesive learning experience. This has prompted ABET to require institutions to offer, and for students to take, a capstone design course, which would expose students to the totality of the design process without the addition of new material in a lecture-style setting.

In the Mechanical Engineering curriculum at Oakland University, students are required to take a capstone design course in their senior year. In addition, however, the curriculum has required for many years that all mechanical engineering students take two senior level precursor design oriented courses, one associated with solid mechanics, the other with the fluid and thermal sciences. The mechanics parallel of the Fluid and Thermal System Design course is the Mechanical System Design course. Neither course introduces any new fundamental principles but are instead geared to the design process. Lectures are given, but mainly as a review, or, the application of fundamental principles such as the formulation of theoretical models for the purpose of obtaining design insight. The focus of both courses is design. The present paper details the final design project in the Group B required course entitled Fluid and Thermal System Design.

Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Wedekind, G., & Kobus, C. (2001, June), Optimal Design Of A Thermal Recuperator Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--9631