Teaching Courses and Activities
Mech 101:Introduction to Mechanical Engineering, Fall 06
Mech 301: Thermodynamic, Fall 07
Mech 303: Fluid Mechanics, Fall 05, Spring 08.
Mech 404: Heat Transfer, Fall 05.
Mech 402: Thermal Systems Design, Spring 06, 07, and 08.
Mech 416: Mechanical Systems Design I, Fall 06.
Mech 417: Mechanical Systems Design II, Spring 07.
Mech 515: Advanced Heat Transfer, Fall 07
Thermal Systems Design, as a senior undergraduate course, has been taught by several methods in different mechanical engineering curricula. The intention in this upper-level undergraduate course at WSU Vancouver is to enhance the student’s industrial envision and prepare them for mechanical engineering practice before they graduate.
The students apply the concepts of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer that they have previously learned in relevant fundamental courses, through the real world problems and design projects. To increase the ability of students in design and realization of thermal systems, a design competition is set up in class within the course timeframe. For this purpose, the students are divided into groups. Each group includes three to four members, to design, build, and test a thermal system, such as heat exchangers. They are to work within the realistic constraints, i.e., economical, environmental, ethical, safety, manufacturability, sustainability, etc., on their project. They are then to report the results in a professional fashion and finally present their projects to the faculty and other students. The students’ communication and interpersonal skills are also examined through this design competition.
This approach was taken in the spring semester of 2006 where the students were divided into seven groups to design, build, and test liquid-liquid heat exchangers for some predefined conditions. The groups came up with almost different ideas on designing and building their thermal systems. All the systems were tested by flowing cold water on one side and hot water on the other side. Some of the heat exchangers worked very well and behaved as they were originally designed. However, few of them faced problems due to the high pressure in water supply lines or too much pressure drop within the heat exchangers. All the groups were able to test their HXs and collect some experimental data. They finally conducted Wilson Plot technique, using the collected data, to obtain the actual heat transfer correlations for their HXs. The performances of the heat exchangers designed by the students were then compared with typical brazed plate heat exchangers, manufactured and donated by FlatPlate Inc. It seems the students learned a great deal on thermal systems design and realization from this hands-on project, as summarized below.
Figure 1. Liquid-liquid heat exchangers, designed, built, and tested by a group of senior students (Spring 2006):
1) Concentric rounded tubes, counter-flow, flexible copper tube inside, plastic hose outside, well-insulated
2) Shell-and-tube, one shell pass, eighteen tube passes, copper tube, Plexiglas shell
3) Shell-and-tube, one reinforced shell pass, six copper tube passes, copper tube, Plexiglas shell
4) Concentric rounded tubes, counter-flow, two twisted flexible copper tubes inside, plastic hose outside
5) Concentric bent tubes, counter-flow, copper tube inside, PVC tube outside
6) Shell-and-tube, one shell pass, eight tube passes, copper tube, wooden shell
7) Concentric bent tubes, counter-flow, copper tube inside, PVC tube outside, well-compacted
8) High performance brazed plate heat exchangers (BPHEs)
9) A cutaway of typical BHPEs
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