The Development Stages of Rear Upright for Formula Car

Formula SAE (FSAE) is a design competition organized each year by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). The objective of the competition is to bring the best and brightest future engineers from each participating school to present a small scale race car. Although this sounds like a relatively simple concept, the actual execution is rather challenging and rewarding for the team. For almost three years Tennessee Tech University (TTU) has had a FSAE team. The first year was a planning year, so Tennessee Tech University has participated in the competition for the last two years. Both years have been extreme learning experiences since TTU was not prepared for the level of competition brought by participating schools. However TTU FSAE team is beginning to implement modern design tools such as FEA, Virtual Manufacturing, and Rapid Prototyping to help streamline the design efforts so that one day Golden Eagle FSAE will be one of the top competing teams. In this publication, authors will report on one Golden Eagle FSAE component (the rear upright) development stages and its accomplishments.

Heat Pipe Optimization Team: The Heat Pipe Assisted Heat Sink Project

The Heat Pipe Assisted Heat Sink (HPAHS) team will be working on solving challenging thermal management problems for a device known as the base transceiver station (BTS); a device used to transfer cell phone calls. This problem was raised due to transfer cell phone calls. This problem was raised due to the high use of cell phone in recent years. According to 2002 Scarborough Research, the number of cell phones in US was 180 million (2/3 of population). Due to this high increase in demand for cell phone usage, Replacement Handset Shipments are projected to increase worldwide from Current 40% of total shipments to almost 85%. This will increase from 211 million in 2002 to 591 million by 2008 (Nokia). Cell phone calls are transferred via a device known as the base transceiver station (BTS). Cell phone companies are increasing the performance of the BTS by adding more electronics. Nokia is increasing the current BTS performance by adding another power amplifier. We will encounter the problem of designing the thermal solution to ensure optimal thermal performance, while meeting customer requirements of cost and manufacturing process.

The Water Turbine Competition: A Hands-On Approach to Teaching Conservation Principles

For the past five semesters, the Water Turbine Competition has added significant excitement and motivation to the historically dreaded Fluid Mechanics course offered in the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the United States Military Academy. The Water Turbine Competition is an adaptation of the national Hydropower Contest. Teams of two or three students build a water turbine that will lift a weight using only the potential energy stored in a tank of water that is suspended above ground level. The water turbine project has proven to be an exciting and beneficial educational tool.

A Study of the Running Accuracy of Re-Circulating, Linear Bearings

The demand for faster operation, higher quality output and increased efficiency in automation and machine control systems has led to increased demands on guidance systems. Innovation of re-circulating, linear bearing guide technology has launched that option as the preferred choice for most precision linear motion stages. As the use of re-circulating linear guides increases, many vendors have entered the market, producing nearly identical products. All vendors promote similar load capabilities, running speeds and accuracies. A machine designer has difficulty in selecting a specific brand. An extensive study was conducted to evaluate the running accuracy of several commercially available, re-circulating bearings and configurations. This paper will describe the results of the study and explain the reasons for various inaccuracies. These results will help understand the subtle details of the different styles.

Automated Outcomes-Based Assessment Process for Traditional and Project-Based Engineering Instruction

An outcomes-based assessment process called QQI, an acronym for Quantity-Quality-Improvement, has been developed and pilot-tested in several courses, both traditional and project-based, in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. An online version of the QQI survey instrument has been created which automates collection of data and rapid generation of reports to faculty. The QQI process, including the instrument and report generator, research and design basis, and results of pilot testing, are described and department-wide implementation plans are discussed.

Creation of Nano-Scaled Surface Structure for the Enhancement of Boiling Heat Transfer

The present research is an experimental investigation of nucleate pool boiling heat transfer enhancement on a surface with micro/nano-scaled surface structures. Glancing Angle Deposition (GLAD) was employed to fabricate porous surfaces in this study. The thin film microstructure consists of closely packed columns oriented in the plane of incidence formed due to a self-shadowing mechanism. Boiling heat transfer from the nano-structured surface was compared to that of a smooth reference surface and the commercial High Flux surface. The results of this study have shown that nano-structured films created by the GLAD process increase the nucleation site density as compared to the smooth surface. This research has opened up new areas in the field of heat transfer, which motivate new surface coating concepts to enhance the understanding of boiling heat transfer on nano-structured films.

Developing a Virtual Model of a Second Order System to Simulation Real Laboratory Measurement Problems

Most of the student’s educational exposure is to well behaved, deterministic problems with known results. Most courses expose students to material in compartmentized modules (chapters of a book) with exercises/problems (at the end of the chapter) where the majority of the material is readily found in the compartmentized module. Unfortunately, real world problems never fit this simple mold. Laboratory is the perfect place for students to become exposed to real world problems and solutions to those problems. Laboratory is the perfect place to put all the student’s knowledge of basic STEM material to the test. However, many times the real world measurement is much more complicated than the textbook problems and students often struggle with methods and procedures to solve a given problem (with no answer at the back of the book). This is true for a mechanical measurement of a simple second order mass, spring, dashpot system which is measured with displacement and acceleration instruments in an existing mechanical engineering laboratory exercise. The measurement is plagued with measurement errors, drift, bias, digital data acquisition amplitude/quantization errors, etc. In order to understand the basic underlying measurement and associated “problems” with the measurement, a simple simulation model was developed. The simulation model allows the students to define a basic second order system and then add different types of “problems” (drift, bias, quantization, noise, etc) to the measurement to see their effects. The simulation module further allows the student to “cleanse” the distorted data using common measurement tools such as coupling, filtering, smoothing, etc. to understand the effects of processing the data. The simulation model is built using Simulink/MATLAB and allows a simple GUI to modify the model, the “problems” added to the data and the “cleansing” of the data, to obtain a better understanding of the problem and tools to process the data. The simulation model is presented and discussed in the paper. Several data sets are presented to illustrate the simulation module.

Developing a Multisemester Interwoven Dynamic Systems Project to Foster Learning and Retention of STEM Material

Students generally do not understand how basic STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) material fits into all of their engineering courses. Basic material is presented in introductory courses but the relationship of the material to subsequent courses is unclear to the student since the practical relevance of the material is not necessarily presented. Students generally hit the “reset button” after each course not realizing the importance of basic STEM material. The capstone experience is supposed to “tie all the pieces together” but this occurs too late in the student’s educational career. A new multisemester interwoven dynamic systems project has been initiated to better integrate the material from differential equations, mathematical methods, laboratory measurements and dynamic systems across several semesters/courses so that the students can better understand the relationship of basic STEM material to an ongoing problem. This paper highlights the overall concept to be addressed by the new approach. The description of the project and modules under development are discussed.

Integrating Fundamental STEM Material in a Laboratory Based Dynamic Systems Course

A Dynamic Systems course generally involves material from previous undergraduate courses related to Differential Equations, Mathematical Methods for Engineers, Dynamics, etc. These underlying courses are basic building blocks that are critical to the students understanding of dynamic systems material. However, students often consider material in earlier courses as irrelevant since immediate practical application is not implemented in the previous courses. A traditional Dynamic Systems course, with traditional class lecture/homework/test scenario is destined to the same fate as these earlier courses if taught in the same manner. A new variation of this course has been implemented which has individual projects which address various analytical approaches using closed-form analytical solutions with MATLAB and SIMULINK computer software to completely address 1st and 2nd order systems. In addition, a laboratory based component is added to collect measured data for these systems to be used to further develop the analytical representation of these systems. Students work in groups and collect data to develop these models and prepare detailed reports summarizing their efforts. The project is described along with lab experiments performed. Student comments regarding the project are presented. Assessments of the first two semesters of the project clearly indicate that the students enjoyed the hands-on based project and clearly felt that they understood the material in much greater depth as a result of the project.

Flow Around Rectangular Cylinders With Trailing Jets

The problem of flow past bluff bodies was studied extensively in the past. The problem of drag reduction is very important in many high speed flow applications. Considerable work has been done in this subject area in case of circular cylinders. The present study attempts to investigate the feasibility of drag reduction on a rectangular cylinder by flow injection from the rear stagnation region. The physical problem is modeled as two-dimensional body and numerical analysis is carried out with and without trailing jets. A commercial code is used for this purpose. Unsteady computation is performed in case of rectangular cylinders with no trailing jets where as steady state computation is performed when jet is introduced. It is found that drag can be reduced by introducing jets with small intensity in rear stagnation region of the rectangular cylinders.