During the Spring Semester of 1997, a freshman engineering class was immersed into the engineering design process by working side-by-side with faculty, engineers and high school students to design and construct a robot to compete in the FIRST Competition. The students studied and applied a nine step design process to bring their conceptual paper designs to life by building a 3'x'3'x4', 120 pound robot in just six weeks. Based on student feedback, this hands-on application of the engineering design process was much more effective (and more fun) than the traditional lecture style course. The freshman felt they learned a great deal more about 'real' engineering when faced with deadlines, budget constraints, teamwork conflicts, the laws of physics, etc. The FIRST robot competition is an ideal project to expose freshman to the engineering design process.
An undergraduate gas turbine laboratory facility was designed and installed by four senior Mechanical Engineering students for their capstone design project at the U. S. Coast Guard Academy. The seniors instrumented a 65 horsepower gas turbine auxiliary power unit from an HH-3F Pelican helicopter and installed it in the existing engine laboratory. The objective of this project was to provide an opportunity for engineering students to better understand thermodynamic principles of gas turbine operation through hands-on experimentation. The laboratory facility was designed to allow students to determine the performance characteristics of the T-62-16B gas turbine and relate them to a Brayton cycle model. This paper details the installation and instrumentation of the gas turbine, the design of the data acquisition system, the results obtained with initial system tests, and future experimental plans.
During the Fall Semester of 1996, digitized video and real time force data were used to determine the system characteristics necessary to model a bungee cord egg drop experiment as a damped second order system. This effort was unique, in that, video tape of student "drops" were digitized and analyzed to determine position, velocity, and acceleration, as a function of time, while simultaneous inline force data was acquired. Both sets of were used to determine the system damping factor and damped natural period. These parameters were then used by the students to calculate the system response with excellent results. An attempt was made to use the force data to infer acceleration, velocity, and final position during the first half cycle of motion. However, this effort was unsuccessful since the mass of the elastic cord was not negligible. The experience with the force data did highlight the subtleties associated with such an experiment, in terms of the overall goal of modeling the system as a damped second order system.
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