USING DESIGN, BUILD AND TEST PROJECTS IN A WIND TUNNEL TO IMPROVE ENGINEERING EDUCATION

USING DESIGN, BUILD AND TEST PROJECTS IN A WIND TUNNEL TO IMPROVE ENGINEERING EDUCATION

DUE-9952308, April 1, 2000 to March 31,2002, $92,289

Project Team

Donald Elger, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Idaho

Ralph Budwig, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Idaho

Steven Beyerlein, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Idaho

Matt Cunnington, Graduate Student, Mechanical Engineering

Levi Westra, Graduate Student, Mechanical Engineering

Project Objectives

1. Design, Fabricate and Test a Wind Tunnel Facility. Beginning engineering students should be able to operate the facility with less than 10 minutes of training. The facility will foster skill development for real world experiments (avoid lock-step, constrained labs assignments). The facility will support traditional engineering research.

2. Design, Build and Test Project. A design, build and test (DBT) project is a class of project intended to promote effective educational outcomes. A DBT involves integrated learning of engineering skills such as teaming, math modeling, design, and communication. The project objectives were to integrate the wind tunnel into DBT projects and to continue to improve these projects.

Activities to Achieve Objectives

1. A wind tunnel facility was designed, fabricated, and debugged. All major goals were accomplished.

2. We have implemented approximately 15 DBT projects in engineering classes at the pre-college, the sophomore, and the junior level. These projects were implemented in three different classes: engineering fluid mechanics, sophomore and junior design. The continuing improvement focus of our DBT projects has centered on (i) improving students’ abilities to measure and test, (ii) improving students’ abilities to math model as a means to predict prior to fabrication, and (iii) improving students’ abilities to team.

3. Presentations and publications about our efforts have been made at approximately four ASEE and FIE meetings.

Project Findings

We have a variety of findings that are documented in our technical papers and the two MS theses (one still in progress) that have been supported by this work. Together with our other projects and activities, these finding point towards a compelling idea. There is a way to educate engineers that is far more effective than what is presently done. This new way of educating engineers builds on the educational theory of John Dewey. Dewey believed that all learning is based on experience and that the essential question for education is the quality of the experience. By creating a rich quality of experience, one can dramatically improve outcomes. This rich quality may be achieved by careful design and consideration of the total learning environment. This idea has served as a foundation for our most recent NSF project—“The enriched learning environment model, a community for learning.”

Training and Development

1. Undergraduate Students. The project has directly impacted approximately 500 students who have participated in DBT projects.

2. Graduate Students. Two graduate students were partially supported on this project. One student has finished and the second student will finish this summer.

3. Mentoring Program. Project funds partially supported early iterations of an undergraduate mentors program. Approximately 12 undergraduates received training in mentoring.

4. Faculty Development. This project has partially supported 2 faculty development workshops. These workshops focused on how to assess the cognitive complexity of individual students, and how to design activities that are appropriate to each individual.

Outreach Activities

Each summer during the project, approximately 40 high-school students attended an intense 2-week long workshop. These students participated in a design, build and test project, and in year 2 of the project, these students were the first group to use the wind tunnel as a means to test a design that they had developed and fabricated.

Publications

1. Duncan-Hewitt, W., Mount, D., Beyerlein, S.B., Elger, D.F., Steciak, J., Using Developmental Principles to Plan Design Experiences for Beginning Engineering Students, Proceedings of the 2001 Frontiers in Education Program, Reno, 2001.

2. Duncan-Hewitt, W., Mount, D., Beyerlein, S.B., Elger, D.F., Steciak, J., Using Developmental Principles to Plan Mentoring Experiences for Graduate Students, Proceedings of the 2001 Frontiers in Education Program, Reno, 2001.

3. Elger, D.F., Beyerlein, S.W., Budwig R.S., Using Design, Build and Test Projects to Teach Engineering, Proceedings of the 2000 Frontiers in Education Conference, Kansas City, Missouri, October 2000.

4. Cunnington, J.M, Westra, L.J., Beyerlein, S.W., Budwig, R.S., and Elger, D.F., Design of a Wind Tunnel Facility for Hands-on Use by Beginning Engineering Students, Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE Conference, Montreal, Canada, June 2002.

5. Cunnington, J.M., Budwig, R.S., Elger, D.F., The Drag and Stability Characteristics of Small Scale Parachutes, In progress--to be submitted to the ASME J. Fluids Engr.

6. Cunnington, J.M., Two Wind Tunnel Projects: (a) Design of a facility for undergraduate education, and (b) The drag and stability characteristics of small scale parachutes, M.S. Thesis, University of Idaho, 2002.

7. Westra, L.J., The Teaming Process for Engineering Students: M.S. Thesis, University of Idaho, in progress.

Web Site

http://www.its.uidaho.edu/wtp/

Other Products--The Wind Tunnel

The wind tunnel, Fig. 1, was made by Engineering Laboratory Design. It is an Eiffel-type wind tunnel 10.36 m long and 2.16 m tall overall. The motor is a 37 kW AC induction motor controlled by a variable frequency controller. The motor drives a 1.22 m, axial fan, which can produce air velocities of 70 m/s in the test section. The test section is made of 1.91 cm thick Plexiglas, and has a 45 cm square cross-section that is 91.44 cm long.

Figure 1: The user-friendly wind tunnel facility at the University of Idaho.

The wind tunnel was designed to facilitate teaming. The room can accommodate up to eight team members and a mentor during a test, Fig. 2. Other groups can observe activities in the wind tunnel room and test section through a window, Fig 3, between the room and the hallway.

Figure 2: JEMS summer camp students using the wind tunnel with their mentor.

Figure 3: Students watching the action in the wind tunnel.

The air velocity measurement device is a Dwyer Smart Air Velocity Transmitter. It is a thermal anemometer with a velocity range of 0 – 76 m/s and outputs a DC voltage signal, proportional to the air velocity at the sensor. We use an electronic internal force balance, made by Aerolab, to support models in the test section and measure forces on the model. The force balance consists of a support beam with strain gages for three channels – lift, drag, and pitching moment. The lift force channel has an accuracy of 0.00385N, and the drag force channel has an accuracy of 0.00454N based on the sum of the square of the residuals from calibration data1.

Digital displays, which are made by Newport Electronics, convert the voltage signal from the anemometer, force balance, and angle of attack potentiometer into a reading in SI units, Fig 4. There are 3 strain gage displays, one display for the anemometer, and one display for the angle of attack potentiometer. The strain gage displays have an accuracy of 0.005% full scale, and the other displays have an accuracy of 0.03% full scale. The displays also provide excitation voltage for the strain gages.

The Newport digital displays meet European Union standards for electromagnetic interference (EMI) noise rejection and production. EMI was a problem for a custom circuit and an OTEK panel meter we used to measure strain gage voltage. We used a Vishay strain gage reader and found that this system was completely immune to the EMI that the custom circuit and OTEK meter experienced, but the Vishay was too large and difficult to use to satisfy the user-friendly wind tunnel design. We found the Newport displays using a web search, acquired a trial display and found that the display was completely immune to the EMI.

Figure 4: The digital displays in their enclosure.

Contributions

Education should focus around a simple question—what works for a diverse population of students in terms of creating desired learning outcomes? This project has contributed to developing understanding of this issue. In particular, project activities have helped us develop educational approaches that work better than the approaches that presently dominate engineering education. Our search for better approaches has led to a startling hypothesis--we believe that the present education system is flawed and needs to be replaced by one that is founded on different assumptions. Because it will take us many years to gather evidence and test this hypothesis, it is not possible to wrap the findings from this specific project into a neat package. Nevertheless, we may summarize some of our most significant conclusions.

1. The engineering education community is locked into the assumption that their job is to transmit the body of knowledge to students. This assumption is clearly evident because educators are locked onto the idea that they “need to cover the material.” In a more effective educational system, we believe that the job of educators is to create meaningful experiences. Learning and growth of students arises from these rich learning experiences.

2. In the right environment, students become active, bright and engaged learners.

3. For many of the educational outcomes that are valued by professors, students learn best by doing and then by reflecting on their experiences. In this context, professors should use less lecture and more inductive teaching methods.

4. Social influences profoundly influence learning. In this context, professors should use more methods (such as cooperative learning) that promote social interaction.

5. Learning of teaming skills is an area that engineering educators should focus on. Teaming should be taught as a process. That is, teach and assess teaming as a performance, not as a body of knowledge to be learned.

6. Education of engineers is holistic. An approach that seeks to teach teaming in one class, analysis in another, design in another, writing in another, etc. is highly inefficient. A more effective approach involves teaching of engineering as a whole skill.

7. Engineering students should be constantly challenged to demonstrate their proficiency by engaging in performances that show that they can perform as an engineer. That is, the students should design, estimate, build, measure, test evaluate, present, and be held accountable for the quality of these performances. The ability to “do engineering” is the true measure of learning.

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