Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Students Research Articles

A Comparative Analysis of Attainment of Program Outcomes for Courses with and without the Use of Modern Tools

An important consideration in higher education is that graduates meet or exceed the program outcomes (POs). While there exists anecdotal evidence that the use of modern tools i.e. computer modelling and simulation, improve attainment of these outcomes, there is little empirical research available. Where empirical evidence is available, the variables considered would almost certainly have a bearing on the outcomes. In this work, the attainment of the POs by undergraduate engineering students in courses with and without the use of modern tools, based on quantitative data, were compared. It was hypothesized that courses using modern tools would lead to better overall attainment of POs, compared to courses not using these tools. As a case study, the PO attainment of students in the Mechanical Engineering undergraduate program at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) was considered. Quantitative data obtained through UTP's outcomebased education (OBE) software was used to assess the overall attainment of the POs for all courses for a cohort of 126 Mechanical Engineering undergraduate students class of 2017. It was found that, for the case study considered, the usage of modern tools has led to slightly better attainment of some POs, with slightly poorer attainment in other POs. Specifically, attainment in POs where the cognitive or the knowledge domain is more dominant improved, as the usage of modern tools helped students to understand theoretical concepts better. Attainment in POs were the affective domain is more dominant recorded a slight decrease, and the incorporation of modern tools did not aid in the attainment of these POs. The study is at a preliminary stage and a more detailed study, involving more cohorts, is planned to establish a correlation (if any) between the use of modern tools in higher education and attainment of POs.

Addressing Cultural Challenges in a Global Service Learning Project to Reduce Plastic Waste in Rural India

In the summer of 2015, a group of chemical and mechanical engineering undergraduate students from the University of Kentucky Paducah Extended Campus Program participated in a Global Service Learning and Sustainability course focused on implementing a project to convert waste plastic into a sustainable liquid fuel in rural southern India. The successful construction, operation and testing of the liquid fuel in local diesel powered irrigation pumps will be described. Service learning projects conducted in other countries often face cultural hurdles that are quite different than in traditional study abroad programs. Working side-by-side with local people requires adapting to cultural practices that may be quite different from the students’ expectations. To address this, cultural aspects and social sustainability were included in a lecture component of the service learning course as well as in the implementation of the service project. The learning outcomes for this course included providing students with clear understanding of the key issues of sustainability and sustainable community development in rural and underdeveloped regions and educating them as to how engineers must consider cultural factors when working in underdeveloped regions. This service learning project was conducted in collaboration with the Organization of Development Action and Maintenance (ODAM) in Tiruchuli, India.

Technology enabled learning of metal forming processes for engineering graduates using virtual simulation lab

Metal forming process is a widely used manufacturing process mainly for its economy, dimensional precision, and improved mechanical properties of the formed product. Real-time laboratory experiments are key to mechanical engineering course of metal forming. Lack of available capital in small engineering institutions constraints huge investments over machinery and necessary technologies. An interactive metal forming simulation lab is developed (i) having web-based global access to everyone (ii) with user friendly interface to move seamlessly and find topics (iii) enhancing learning by CAD simulations of metal forming processes (iv) to explore what-if situations experimenting over interactive simulation benches and (v) automatically scored e-quizzes for testing knowledge. This work helps amateur mechanical engineers and mechanical engineering undergraduate students of second, third, fourth, and fifth semesters, respectively, in learning and understanding of metal forming processes and concepts, allowing analysis and visualization of temperature changes, microstructure change, etc. This can be accessed through web address http://msvs-dei.vlabs.ac.in/ and contains over 200 modules. Each module is supported by adequate theory to reduce time and effort needed to understand different metal forming setups, various process parameters, materials, and equipments involved in the processes and provides interactive learning environment.

Quality of Life, Physical Activity and Risk Behaviors: A Case Study in Mechanical Engineering Students

This paper describes a transversal study involving 296 undergraduate mechanical engineering students, using a descriptive probabilistic approach. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the level of life quality and physical activity of the participants, comparing them to variables indicative of health risk factors. It was found that 70.6% of the study population evaluated their life quality standard as good or very good. With respect to their level of physical activity, 38.8% of the participants are physically inactive in their leisure time. As for the prevalence of risk factors, 3.7% of them belong to high risk groups: sedentary, overweight, and/or smokers. In addition, the hypothesis of a direct correlation between the level of physical fitness and life quality is confirmed.

An Undergraduate Student Project to Improve Mechanical Control of Perennial Nutsedges with a Peanut Digger in Organic Crop Production

Yellow and purple nutsedge are common in the southeastern United States, and both perennial species are difficult to control in organic crop-production systems. Tubers are generally confined to the upper portions of the soil profile and are vulnerable to desiccation when brought to the soil surface. A peanut digger is a common implement found in the coastal plain region of the southeastern United States and has shown promise controlling perennial nutsedges in fallow sites. The peanut digger undercuts perennial nutsedges, deposits weeds on the soil surface, and exposes weeds to desiccation. However, rainfall after tillage with the peanut digger allows displaced nutsedges to survive. As part of a senior-level class project, undergraduate mechanical engineering students from Auburn University designed and constructed a cart attached to a peanut digger that collected nutsedges. Key features included a custom hitch that allowed the correct plane of movement and a hydraulic conveyor system that discarded the perennial nutsedges off-site, away from the field. The prototype was tested in a fallow location in the summer of 2014 with a yellow nutsedge infestation averaging 148 plants m−2. One week after the initial field test, tillage using the peanut digger with specialized cart reduced yellow nutsedge densities in the tilled area by > 99%.

The effect of curricular activities on learner autonomy: the perspective of undergraduate mechanical engineering students

This study researches how first-year engineering students perceived the influence of curricular activities on their own learning autonomy, measured with an adaptation of the Personal Responsibility Orientation to Self-direction in Learning Scale (PRO-SDLS). Participants were questioned to assess the influence of the teacher's role. The results indicate that learners’ characteristics (motivation and self-efficacy) contribute more to learner autonomy (LA) than the teaching–learning transaction (control and initiative), as in the original PRO-SDLS validation. The most autonomous learners presented higher values in all LA components and dimensions, but the differences were greater in motivation and initiative. The participants with higher LA were not as dependent on the teacher, regarding assessment, the completion of classroom tasks and deadlines. Regardless of the degree of autonomy in learning, all participants viewed teachers as the main source of information. Therefore, LA plays an important role in teaching activities planning. Suggestions for adjustments and more flexible learning scenarios are formulated.

Teaching Mechanical Design Practice in Academia

In many research universities, mechanical engineering (ME) curriculum does not include courses that teach ME students essential professional knowledge needed to become a design engineer. Professional know-how is not regarded as an academic topic, although a mechanical designer who will get a job in industry will need to apply this knowledge from his first day. Topics such as selecting mechanical elements (motors, bearings, seals etc.) from a catalog or selecting a proper material or coating for a designed part, are rarely taught even in machine design courses.We believe that mechanical engineering students should learn practical skills and get basic design experience. To close this gap, we introduced a new “Design and Manufacture Laboratory” for senior ME undergraduate students. The paper describes the laboratory course, students’ activities and design projects. The design projects performed in the lab, follow the learned design methodology and include design reviews and appropriate documentation. The designed systems are produced, assembled and tested by each team.In addition to the learned technical skills, “soft skills” are taught in the lab related to mechanical design that include: team work, self- management, time management, communication skills and presentation skills. These soft skills are an essential tool for every mechanical engineer who starts to work in the global and changing industrial world.

The Analyzing of the Computer Science Learning Habits of the Freshmen Mechanical Engineering Students on the Obuda University in the Last Five Years

Aim of this research to analysing the learning habit of the freshmen undergraduate mechanical engineering students in the first semester and compare it in the last five years. The students have to pass two tests until the semester the first on the 6th-7th week the second on the 13th-14th week. Between the tests the students may to participate on the presentations. My personal experience shows the big part of the students until the presentation period do not have learned the teaching material week in week out just have visited the presentations or simple stayed at home. The situation is unfortunately same by other subject too at the university and the colleagues have same experience from other universities and colleges in Hungary. The learning habit of the undergraduate mechanical engineering students could be following and analysing if we can see the details of the downloading of the teaching materials. The Students may download the teaching material of basic Computer Science from an own developed web based system. The material is accessible in the system just after the presentation, on the same day the students have the opportunity to save read and learn it. They get username and password to log into this system, which logs the download saving usernames and the time of each file transfer. A huge mass of data makes possible a statistical audit and the analysing based on. The analysing of the data made possible to draw conclusions regarding the learning habits of undergraduate mechanical engineering students. I analysed the saved data of downloads in the last five years to see the changing of the learning habits of the students if is it recognisable. We can draw the inference on learning habits analyzing the distribution of downloads before the test. The prepared two chart show frequency of downloads depending on time. On the first chart we can see the frequency of downloads before the first test, on the next chart the frequency of downloads before the second test. We can see one-one peak on the charts it means most downloads took place the day before the first test and the second test. The overwhelming part of students wanted to learn the material only one day before the test. On the days of tests we can see a little bit lower number of downloads. The result of the analysing shows the students downloaded the teaching material on the day of test or the previous day. It means these students did not have enough time to read, understand and learn the teaching material before the test and these habits do not have changed in the last five years. The earlier analysing showed the situation is same in the first semester and the undergraduate mechanical engineering students did not recognise the advantage of the learning earlier before the test. I have found strong correlation between the days before the test and the number of downloads of teaching material. It needs a didactical method to motivate the students to download the teaching material earlier and read it to pass the tests in higher percentage because this learning habit has influence on the results of the successful exams too.

The Effect of Use of Concept Maps on Problem Solving Performance and Attitude in Mechanical Engineering Course

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of concept mapping strategy on the performance of the students in problem solving. The study was done on a sample of 84 third year undergraduate mechanical engineering students. The subject of the study was Internal combustion engines at a college of engineering of the University of Mumbai. The study used a pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental design method on a control group and an experimental group. Each group consisted of 42 students. The study was conducted over a six weeks period. The experimental group was taught the topic of Introduction to internal combustion engines with concept maps as a teaching-learning method. The control group was taught the same topic without the use of concept maps. The experimental group revealed two results. Firstly, adopting concept mapping strategy can significantly improve students’ performance in problem solving compared to using traditional teaching methods. There were significant differences favoring the experimental group for the well structured problem solving performance while there were no significant differences on ill structured problem solving performance. Secondly, most of the students were positive about using concept mapping strategy in an internal combustion engine course. They indicated that concept maps can help them to understand, identify the key concepts, and connect the various concepts.

Interactive on-line resources for training forensic engineers

Analysing engineering failures to determine causes, mechanisms and routes to avoid or mitigate future problems is often relatively straightforward. However, in multifaceted situations, or with complex structures, the exercise of forensic engineering can be rather more difficult. Alongside the potential interdisciplinary complexity of failure analysis, which is an important subset of the field of forensic engineering, there are significant issues in the communication of learning about failure and in the forensic training of engineers. From the viewpoint of failures experienced in mechanical and metallurgical engineering, this paper explores several current ideas related to definitions of failure, and ways of analysing and communicating learning about the cause–action–result sequence of events in a failure scenario. The paper also outlines the web-based resources developed by the author to support forensic training of undergraduate mechanical engineering students and continuing professional development of working engineers.

Undergraduate Mechatronics Research Case Study: Contributing towards a Dexterous Robot Hand

The importance of implementing a strong project-based approach to undergraduate mechatronics education and the enhancement obtained through the introduction of a research aspect to these projects have been emphasized in the literature. This paper describes the immersion of final-year undergraduate mechanical engineering students into the research programme of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering of the University of Malta, through supervised undergraduate projects that build upon each other from year to year, eventually leading to publications in the international research literature. We focus on the area of robot hands and present an extended project as a case study. We first describe briefly a selection of research-oriented undergraduate projects in this area carried out over the last decade. The paper then focuses on one particular project among those described, involving the development of an anthropomorphic robot hand with eight degrees of freedom that is based on observations of the attributes and the limitations of the human hand. The robot hand is intended to be used as a teleoperated slave device and a particular objective is to reduce its size and weight through the remote location of all of the actuators and sensors. The paper gives a detailed rationale for the design, followed by descriptions of the kinematic, mechanical, actuation, sensing and control systems of the constructed prototype. This is followed by a description of sensor calibration procedures and results. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the significance of this work, addressing both the educational and research aspects, and of future directions to be taken.

Renewable-Energy Education for Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Students

Mechanical engineering (ME) encompasses a broad array of topics and subjects. A significant portion of renewable-energy technologies (RETs) can be directly or indirectly linked with different ME undergraduate courses or specializations. Gradually, the job markets for diverse fields of RETs are emerging for ME graduates. It will be beneficial for students to be well aware of the fundamentals of different RETs. This paper highlights the significance of different renewable sources of energy along with their contributions in the present global energy scenario. The diverse emerging modern technological options to harness these energy sources are discussed from an ME perspective. Finally, a model undergraduate ME course on the fundamentals of renewable energy is outlined.

Plagiarism in Mechanical Engineering Education: A Comparative Study of International and Domestic Students

This paper addresses the cultural influences that contribute to student attitudes to plagiarism by examining undergraduate mechanical engineering students. The participants were selected based on their lack of familiarity with the Australian university system: they were either first-year undergraduate Australian students matriculating directly from high school or newly arrived international students. Attitudes to plagiarism were determined through interviews and surveys. Their abilities to recognise and rate the level of plagiarism in a series of writing samples were also examined. The results revealed that there was little difference between the international and first-year Australian students. Skill deficiencies and language issues, representing potentially significant disadvantage with respect to academic writing, were evident, however, when international students were asked to correct the identified plagiarised material. In the international student group there was poor alignment of students' understanding of plagiarism and their perception of its impact with that stated in university academic conduct policy. It also appears that after the admission requirements for an Australian tertiary institution are met, the lack of exposure to and familiarity with specific academic cultural expectations is as significant as the ethnicity and linguistic background of the student.

A Control Systems Laboratory for Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Education

This article describes seven laboratory experiments that have been developed for the automatic controls course at Valparaiso University. It also presents the results of a self-assessment survey taken by the students after they had done these laboratory experiments. Automatic controls recently became a required course for all undergraduate mechanical engineering students. When taught as an elective, it was noticed that many students tended to struggle with this class. Most students perceive this class to be a collection of different mathematical tools without any application or use in their future careers. To alleviate this situation and assist students in visualizing control systems in practical situations, a half-credit elective control laboratory, which consists of five experiments and two laboratory projects, has been developed. These experiments will help students to understand the application of this topic and to learn to develop appropriate mathematical models and control routines in closed-loop systems with computers in the loop.

TEACHING DESIGN IN AN UNDERGRADUATE HEAT TRANSFER COURSE

Third year undergraduate mechanical engineering students at the University of Toronto take a one-semester course in heat and mass transfer that is taught as a course in design of electronic cooling systems, combining theory with design and experiments. At the start of the course students are introduced to heat transfer problems faced by the electronics industry and cooling technologies. Heat transfer theory is then presented by analyzing electronic cooling systems. A combined numerical and experimental project is given to design a cooling system for an electronic instrument. Students are given a kit that includes a circuit board, heat sinks and a cooling fan. Components generating heat are represented by square aluminum plates clamped around thin heaters that can be placed anywhere on the circuit board. Students write a computer code to solve heat transfer equations and predict temperature distributions in the circuit board. The accuracy of these predictions is verified by experimental measurements. Results are submitted in the form of a report written from the perspective of a thermal design engineer working in a company that manufactures electronic equipment.

Computer‐aided tool for teaching mechanical clutch systems design

AbstractThis paper describes an educational computer application—MecClutch—focused on teaching the design process of mechanical clutches and their operational conditions to Mechanical Engineering students. The software is divided into three sections: (1) multimedia files, pictures, and videos, produced in order to teach the working of the mechanism, (2) theoretical information related to mechanical clutches, and (3) interactive problems that allow to design a mechanical clutch and test changes in operational conditions when varying the value of critical design parameters. This software has become a very useful tool for undergraduate Mechanical Engineering students in compliment to theoretical classes or alone, as a self‐study tool. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 19: 493–500, 2011

Biologically Meaningful Keywords for Functional Terms of the Functional Basis

Biology is recognized as an excellent source of analogies and stimuli for engineering design. Previous work focused on the systematic identification of relevant biological analogies by searching for instances of functional keywords in biological information in natural-language format. This past work revealed that engineering keywords could not always be used to identify the most relevant biological analogies as the vocabularies between biology and engineering are sufficiently distinct. Therefore, a retrieval algorithm was developed to identify potential biologically meaningful keywords that are more effective in searching biological text than corresponding engineering keywords. In our current work, we applied and refined the retrieval algorithm to translate functional terms of the functional basis into biologically meaningful keywords. The functional basis is widely accepted as a standardized representation of engineering product functionality. Therefore, our keywords could serve as a thesaurus for engineers to find biological analogies relevant to their design problems. We also describe specific semantic relationships that can be used to identify biologically meaningful keywords in excerpts describing biological phenomena. These semantic relations were applied as criteria to identify the most useful biologically meaningful keywords. Through a preliminary validation experiment, we observed that different translators were able to apply the criteria to identify biologically meaningful keywords with a high degree of agreement to those identified by the authors. In addition, we describe how fourth-year undergraduate mechanical engineering students used the biologically meaningful keywords to develop concepts for their design projects.

Comprehensive simulation software for teaching camera calibration by a constructivist methodology

This paper describes the Metrovisionlab computer application implemented as a toolbox for the Matlab program. It is designed to teach the most important camera calibration aspects in dimensional metrology applications such as laser triangulation sensors and photogrammetry or stereovision systems. This software is used in several industrial vision courses for senior undergraduate mechanical engineering students. The application: simulates a virtual camera, providing a simple and visual understanding of how various characteristics of a camera influence the image that it captures; generates the coordinates of synthetic calibration points, both in the world reference system and the image reference system; and can calibrate with the most important and widely-used methods in the area of vision cameras, using coplanar or non-coplanar calibration points. Thus, the main goal is to have a simulation tool that allows characterizing the accuracy, repeatability, error mechanisms and influences for different measurement conditions and camera calibration algorithms. In the realized tests, the software has demonstrated to be a very effective educational tool.

Lessons Learned: Implementing the Case Teaching Method in a Mechanical Engineering Course

BackgroundCase studies have been found to increase students' critical thinking and problem‐solving skills, higher‐order thinking skills, conceptual change, and their motivation to learn. Despite the popularity of the case study approach within engineering, the empirical research on the effectiveness of case studies is limited and the research that does exist has primarily focused on student perceptions of their learning rather than actual learning outcomes.Purpose (Hypothesis)This paper describes an investigation of the impact of case‐based instruction on undergraduate mechanical engineering students' conceptual understanding and their attitudes towards the use of case studies.Design/MethodSeventy‐three students from two sections of the same mechanical engineering course participated in this study. The two sections were both taught using traditional lecture and case teaching methods. Participants completed pre‐tests, post‐tests, and a survey to assess their conceptual understanding and engagement.ResultsResults suggested that the majority of participants felt the use of case studies was engaging and added a lot of realism to the class. There were no significant differences between traditional lecture and case teaching method on students' conceptual understanding. However, the use of case studies did no harm to students' understanding while making the content more relevant to students.ConclusionsCase‐based instruction can be beneficial for students in terms of actively engaging them and allowing them to see the application and/or relevance of engineering to the real world.

11704 バーチャルトレーニングと実習を融合したものづくり技術者育成の実践事例 : バーチャルトレーニングの効果(OS2 技術教育・工学教育・産業教育・JABEE(1),オーガナイズドセッション)

11704 バーチャルトレーニングと実習を融合したものづくり技術者育成の実践事例 : バーチャルトレーニングの効果(OS2 技術教育・工学教育・産業教育・JABEE(1),オーガナイズドセッション)