scholarly journals CAPSTONE DESIGN IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO

Author(s):  
Ralph O. Buchal

All engineering programs in Canada must culminate in a significant design experience. This paper describes the capstone design course in the Mechanical Engineering Program at the University of Western Ontario. Self-selected student teams choose from several types of projects: faculty-defined projects, student-defined entrepreneurial projects, student design competitions, and industry-sponsored projects. These choices accommodate a wide range of interests and career goals. The primary sources of project funding are industry sponsorship fees and matching funding through the Ontario Centres of Excellence Connections Program. The majority of project expenses are for parts, materials, prototype construction and testing.

Author(s):  
Zahed Siddique

Senior Design Capstone is a required component of many undergraduate engineering programs. The School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma has incorporated industry sponsored design projects, with Experiential Learning as the model, to develop technical and meta-competencies through the Senior Design Practicum Program. The Mechanical Engineering Capstone program has been developed to provide a learning environment, where students in teams work closely with an industry sponsor and a faculty advisor. The student teams work as a consulting group to produce useful results on an open-ended project to the sponsors’ satisfaction within the constraints of time and budget. Three major program elements, are (1) Student teams to learn and perform the tasks to achieve the desired goals of the project (2) Sponsor to define the problem, guide and accept or reject the results, and (3) Faculty to advise, coordinate, and evaluate. The Capstone program has targeted the energy industry, with a focus on oil and gas, which has a very strong presence in the region. The program, working closely with industry partners as mentors, prepares students for the energy industry. The student outcome and program are evaluated with extensive participation from industry. The program was implemented during 2002–2003. Over the last 10-years the program been able to sustain and grow. The plan that was used to sustain the program relied on developing a learning community of students, faculty and industry to support development of student competencies.


Author(s):  
Patrick Dumond ◽  
Eric Lanteigne

Traditionally, mechanical engineering capstone courses focused on teaching students the application of fundamental engineering theory to complex mechanical designs. Recently, there has been a transition towards experiential learning initiatives, such as prototyping, in engineering design. This paper looks at the relationship between the mechanical engineering design capstone course and a course in product design and development, which provides students with the opportunity to build prototypes of their designs, at the University of Ottawa. The importance of the traditional capstone course is considered and the implications of implementing these designs are examined. Many capstone design projects would require extensive work so that they could be implemented. A large hurdle appears to exist between analytical design and design implementation, and the term time constraints limit the complexity of designs intended for prototyping. In fact, students require many design iterations before they can build full-scale functional prototypes of their design. Therefore, we have observed that simple products work best for teaching design implementation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-283
Author(s):  
JAMES M. DOERING

AbstractCool Hand Lukehas a distinct soundtrack that features original music by composer Lalo Schifrin and an intriguing collection of traditional American music selected by director Stuart Rosenberg. The music emerged over an intense nine-month span in 1966–67, during which ideas flowed freely and original plans were often jettisoned. Rosenberg and Schifrin were the film's primary musical architects, but others contributed along the way, including screenwriters, actors, producers, folk music experts, and a trio of banjo players. Based on a wide range of primary sources, including documents in the Warner Bros. Archives at the University of Southern California, interviews with individuals involved in the production, the voluminous popular press about the film, and the film itself, this article is a rare glimpse inside the creative process that produced an unmistakably American soundtrack.


2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Kellam ◽  
Michelle Maher ◽  
James Russell ◽  
Veronica Addison ◽  
Wally Peters

Complex systems study, defined as an understanding of interrelationships between engineered, technical, and non-technical (e.g., social or environmental) systems, has been identified as a critical component of undergraduate engineering education. This paper assesses the extent to which complex systems study has been integrated into undergraduate mechanical engineering programs in the southeastern United States. Engineering administrators and faculty were surveyed and university websites associated with engineering education were examined. The results suggest engineering administrators and faculty believe that undergraduate engineering education remains focused on traditional engineering topics. However, the review of university websites indicates a significant level of activity in complex systems study integration at the university level, although less so at college and department levels.


Author(s):  
Ralph O. Buchal

Society needs innovators to solve pressing design problems, and emerging technologies drive innovation. The Integrated Engineering Program offered at the University of Western Ontario develops engineering innovators by offering an interdisciplinary engineering education with emphasis on emerging technologies and engineering design. The program incorporates design in every year, and offers students the unique opportunity to participate in large multi-year design projects as part of their formal engineering education. A survey shows that students rate these features of the program important and valuable contributors toward their career goals.


Author(s):  
Chris Rennick ◽  
Eugene Li

The capstone design project is ubiquitous in engineering programs worldwide, and is seen by students as the single most important activity in their undergraduate careers. Staff and faculty at the University of Waterloo identified three issues with the current capstone process: students are unaware of industrial suppliers, they lack multi-disciplinary exposure, and they often struggle to identify "good" needs for their projects. The Engineering IDEAs Clinic, with support from instructors and staff from across Engineering, developed a conference for students to address these issues. EngCon – aimed at students in third/fourth year – brought students together with their peers from other programs, instructors from across the Faculty, and representatives from suppliers (both external industry, and internal support units) with the goal of improving their capstone projects. This paper presents the design and implementation of EngCon in both 2017 and 2018 with lessons learned from offering a large coordinated set of workshops aimed at students as they enter their capstone design projects.  


Author(s):  
Amir Jokar ◽  
Stephen Solovitz

This study describes a model for developing a thermo/fluids curriculum in a new mechanical engineering program. Hands-on experience and applied engineering research are the center of this development. The efforts in creating undergraduate, elective, and graduate level courses and laboratories in the fundamental topics of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer are reviewed and explained in detail. A dual approach has been taken in developing the curriculum, so that both undergraduate and graduate students can utilize the facility in their research activities. This development has been revised and optimized since its initiation in 2005, and it has successfully been accredited by ABET. The good results obtained from this model can be used in developing mechanical engineering programs, especially for smaller-sized institutions.


Author(s):  
W.C.D. DeGagne ◽  
Paul Labossiere

One of the most effective and efficient ways for an engineering program to facilitate compliance with the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) accreditation criteria is through capstone design projects and courses. Currently, the University of Manitoba Faculty of Engineering has several capstone design courses; however, each is independently focused on its own respective discipline. The resulting educational experience for students, though rigorous and challenging, is maintained within the boundaries of the students’ engineering discipline, thereby neglecting to provide the opportunity for students to work with people from multiple disciplines and across multiple fields. This style/mode of education, where students work in silos, arguably does not reflect real world engineering. Program representatives from the Faculty of Engineering agree. An interdisciplinary capstone course would provide a more rounded engineering education for students. Exposing students to other disciplines and facilitating their learning of the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to work in a multidisciplinary capacity will more effectively prepare students for the real world. Thus, to better comply with CEAB requirements and to increase the breadth and depth of students’ engineering education, an interdisciplinary capstone pilot course will be launched at the University of Manitoba.This paper explains how this multidisciplinary capstone pilot program has been developed, and touches on the early stages of its initiation and implementation.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Murray ◽  
Joseph L. Garbini

Abstract Capstone design courses in engineering, which provide students the opportunity to tackle open-ended, real-world projects, are generally held in high regard as learning experiences. A relatively new and increasingly important component of engineering is the area of mechatronics. In this paper, we review the goals of capstone design courses and examine how well suited mechatronics projects are for use as projects in capstone design courses. Our experiences in using mechatronics projects in the senior-level capstone design course in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington are presented. From these experiences, we demonstrate that mechatronics projects are particulary well suited for use in capstone design.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document