Asee peer logo

Modifying a Junior Year Machine Design Project to Break Down Knowledge Silos in the Mechanical Engineering Curriculum

Download Paper |

Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Keeping It Real: Real World Examples and Systems Thinking

Tagged Division

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

Page Count

16

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43673

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/43673

Download Count

65

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Ashley J. Earle York College of Pennsylvania

visit author page

Ashley is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical and Civil Engineering department at York College of Pennsylvania. She received her B.S in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and B.A. in International Studies from Lafayette College. She then pursued her Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering at Cornell. During her Ph.D. she discovered her love of teaching and decided to pursue a future at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution, bringing her to York College. Her primary interests in SOTL are conceptual learning/misconceptions, curriculum integration, and reflective learning.

visit author page

biography

Stephen N. Kuchnicki York College of Pennsylvania

visit author page

Dr. Stephen Kuchnicki is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chair of the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at York College of Pennsylvania. He has taught at York College since 2008, mainly in the areas of solid mechanics and materials.

visit author page

biography

Scott F. Kiefer York College of Pennsylvania

visit author page

Scott Kiefer has spent the past twenty-one years teaching mechanical engineering at four different colleges. He started at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez in the traditional role of teaching and administering a modest graduate research program. At Trine University, a small private school in Angola, Indiana, he focused on undergraduate education while teaching ten different courses ranging from introductory freshman courses to senior capstone. Scott also served as an advisor to many different undergraduate research projects. He then moved on to Michigan State University and took a position as a teaching specialist concentrating on undergraduate classroom instruction. Scott finally settled at York College of Pennsylvania. He has been at York College for over ten years and feels as if he has found a place where the focus on teaching and students aligns well with his background and interests.

visit author page

biography

Stephen Andrew Wilkerson, P.E. York College of Pennsylvania

visit author page

Stephen Wilkerson (swilkerson@ycp.edu) received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1990 in Mechanical Engineering. His Thesis and initial work was on underwater explosion bubble dynamics and ship and submarine whipping. After graduation he took a position with the US Army where he has been ever since. For the first decade with the Army he worked on notable programs to include the M829A1 and A2 that were first of a kind composite saboted munition. His travels have taken him to Los Alamos where he worked on modeling the transient dynamic attributes of Kinetic Energy munitions during initial launch. Afterwards he was selected for the exchange scientist program and spent a summer working for DASA Aerospace in Wedel, Germany 1993. His initial research also made a major contribution to the M1A1 barrel reshape initiative that began in 1995. Shortly afterwards he was selected for a 1 year appointment to the United States Military Academy West Point where he taught Mathematics. Following these accomplishments he worked on the SADARM fire and forget projectile that was finally used in the second gulf war.
Since that time, circa 2002, his studies have focused on unmanned systems both air and ground. His team deployed a bomb finding robot named the LynchBot to Iraq late in 2004 and then again in 2006 deployed about a dozen more improved LynchBots to Iraq. His team also assisted in the deployment of 84 TACMAV systems in 2005. Around that time he volunteered as a science advisor and worked at the Rapid Equipping Force during the summer of 2005 where he was exposed to a number of unmanned systems technologies. His initial group composed of about 6 S&T grew to nearly 30 between 2003 and 2010 as he transitioned from a Branch head to an acting Division Chief. In 2010-2012 he again was selected to teach Mathematics at the United States Military Academy West Point. Upon returning to ARL's Vehicle Technology Directorate from West Point he has continued his research on unmanned systems under ARL's Campaign for Maneuver as the Associate Director of Special Programs. Throughout his career he has continued to teach at a variety of colleges and universities. For the last 4 years he has been a part time instructor and collaborator with researchers at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (http://me.umbc.edu/directory/). He is currently an Assistant Professor at York College PA.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

A common feature of Mechanical Engineering curriculum is an integrated Capstone project where students must combine knowledge from various courses to complete a design within a team. However, in many curricula, this culminating project is the first time students are forced to break down the silos that separate thermal fluid sciences, electronic integration and solid mechanics. Most real-world problems involve an intersection of at least two of these disciplines, which means that having additional practice in systems level, integrated thinking will better prepare our graduates to take on complex engineering problems. We modified a standard machine design project (such as a walnut cracker or sawdust press) to a multi-disciplinary wind turbine design project. This new project integrates knowledge and components from three courses that are taken during the fall of junior year (Machine Design, Fluid Dynamics, and Instrumentation and Microprocessors) along with previous course work in Thermodynamics and solid modeling. Additionally, the project also requires students to learn 3D printing to create airfoils for their turbines which is becoming more and more important in many industrial sectors. As the course is still on-going, we will collect data on how students feel the integrated project impacted their understanding of the key course content as well as their preparation for Capstone. We have already collected data regarding these topics prior to the students beginning the project and will be able to compare development of student perspectives as a result of working through the semester.

Earle, A. J., & Kuchnicki, S. N., & Kiefer, S. F., & Wilkerson,, S. A. (2023, June), Modifying a Junior Year Machine Design Project to Break Down Knowledge Silos in the Mechanical Engineering Curriculum Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43673

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015