First Semester
Choosing a topic
-
-
- While my team had a relatively unique experience of having our topic predetermined, we still had a lot of influence over the direction of our project.
- When your group is deciding on a topic, make sure you prioritize discussing projects with which you can utilize your mechanical engineering experience. The point of the senior design project is to develop old and new skills, so be sure to choose a topic that fits within the bounds of mechanical engineering. Also, be sure to be realistic in your goals for your project. A lot can be accomplished over the course of two semesters; however, don’t bite off more than you can chew. It’s important to have a working prototype at the end of your project in order to get the hands-on building experience of senior design.
- Another valuable aspect of senior design is researching, designing, and building a project that has the potential to improve aspects of our society. Whether this improvement is in sustainability, education, safety, etc. Develop ideas early on how you will relate your topic to improving our world.
-
Research
-
-
- In order to fully grasp what we were building and studying, we spent the majority of our time in the first semester researching our topic.
- A practice that was immediately helpful was finding and sharing articles among group members. We would simply take time inside and outside of class to collect a cache of useful articles, research papers, and information.
- This research period is critical because the team should fully understand the concepts, scale, and significance of your project before beginning the design and building phase.
-
Groups, subgroups, and leadership
-
-
- Our group made a decision early on to elect a few members to administrative positions to handle things like finances, website design, and overall team direction. While the entire team would help with their workload and positions, having this leadership arrangement made some decision-making more expedient for the team.
- As our research and designs developed, our team broke into subgroups that focused directly on different aspects of the project. For instance, our group, the compressed air energy storage team, was comprised of a compressor team, heat exchanger team, and expansion subsystem team. There was much inter-group communication and cooperation, but these subgroups helped compartmentalize the project.
-
Second Semester
Design
-
-
- After doing research and some preliminary designs in the fall semester, your team should move into the spring semester with the goal of fully designing and building your project. The subgroups in your team should be able to take your research and project goals and begin to fully design the systems within your project.
- It is important that the team discusses design decisions intermittently to make sure that subsystems and components are designed in such a way that any necessary connections can be made.
- Talk to the shop during the design process. There were many times when our team spent valuable time on designs and then the shop pointed out many problems. Talk to them early on about questions and concerns with your designs.
-
Build
-
-
- As designs are being developed and completed, your team should look to begin building and assembling when ready. Don’t wait too late into the semester to begin assembling your project because you don’t want the last few weeks of the semester to be stressful and you want enough time to test your project’s performance and make any necessary adjustments.
- Continue good communication with your other team members and subgroups throughout the build process. As you are connecting any subsystems that have been designed separately, issues may arise and may need to be addressed.
- Try to be done building and assembling with at least a week left before your demonstration. This will give you enough time to test and collect data from your system. This also gives you a little time to make any corrections or adjustments that are necessary.
-
Testing and data collection
-
-
- Hopefully, you will have enough time to collect data after completing your project build. Data collection is important because not only does it validate your design, but it also provides a lot of valuable material you can present at your project demonstration at the end of the semester.
- Testing your system prior to your official demonstration can help you hone in on how you want to demonstrate your system. Whether there are flaws you don’t want to be noticed or achievements you want to be highlighted, testing can bring these details to the surface and help you decide the best ways to demonstrate your hard work.
-