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Car-truck stands are used during maintenance operations to support one end of a freight car or a commuter car used in railway industry. Usually, they consists of several pieces of steel tubes and other steel members welded together to form a rigid frame structure. From a safety perspective, the car-truck stands are to be designed carefully, but at the same time due to their possible large volume of production, this structure needs to be optimized from strength and cost perspectives besides other parameters such as long life, etc. The purpose of this paper is to conduct virtual experiments for the optimal design of a different car-truck stand structures using Autodesk Simulation program as a CAE tool. The idea is to include this work as a part of final project in a traditional finite element analysis (FEA) course taught at Kettering University. For the work reported here, the structural steel members are simplified by using standard pipe sections, which are then optimized for strength and weight reduction, as well as for buckling. It is hoped that through this study a clear understanding of assumptions made in the FEA course topic on frames is realized by the students. Initial assessment done indicates that students appreciated the use of a CAE tool for optimal design of frames and other structural members.

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Teaching and learning a fundamental core course such as Mechanical Engineering Design (or Machine Design) continues to be fun but a challenging task for many instructors, as well as for students. It certainly helps if an instructor has both hands on and/or professional consulting experience to share their rich and real-life knowledge to keep the students engaged in a classroom and to add value to the course. A typical Machine Design course truly integrates the core concepts taught in Linear Algebra, Statics and Mechanics of Materials courses to a great extent that no other course sequence exists in an undergraduate engineering curriculum, the only exception could be a Capstone Design course that usually requires many other prerequisites in order to give a truly multidisciplinary design experience. Use of some of the math and/or CAE tools as a part of a machine design course is believed to help performing parametric studies and to evolve alternative designs. Due to its nature, students should be taught to appreciate openendedness and ambiguity of design requirements that are inherent in a typical machine design course. These are some of the attributes for innovation and creativity which help them develop a mindset for possible entrepreneurship. It takes a mechanical engineering graduate a long way to practice professional engineering if he/she develops strong engineering and problems solving skills with a different mindset. Machine Design is a typical course that gives this experience. Based on many years of teaching this course, in this paper, the authors present the assessment of course learning objectives (CLOs) and how they are linked to direct assessment of homework, class work, exams and design project outcomes. The CLOs are also mapped with the ABET Program Outcomes. This being a core course it is offered every quarter at Kettering University. The results are presented in the form of charts and tables. The paper concludes with some observations and recommendations as a part of continuous improvement strategy.

Organizing and completing an undergraduate senior design capstone project course that lasts only ten to eleven weeks (one quarter term) is challenging for both the instructor and for the students. In this paper, the experiences and assessment of few senior capstone design projects in the mechanical systems area is discussed in detail. The present author is the coordinator of this capstone course. One of the senior lab technicians helps the students outside the class hours with refining their design drawings, procurement of material, fabrication and testing phases. He helps the author instructor with the assessment of students' work by providing constant feedback about the progress the student groups make at various intervals of time.In this paper, sample capstone design projects and their outcomes will be presented. In particular, this paper gives an overview of the developed devices specifically by focusing on the design and development aspects of the prototypes. Rubrics for grading were provided at the beginning of the term and their progress monitored on a weekly basis. The student involvement includes understanding the strengths and weaknesses of their prerequisites knowledge needed to successfully complete the chosen project. Since Kettering is a co-op university, students alternate between academic and work terms. They have working knowledge and good time management skills. Industry interaction in the capstone courses is highly desirable but not always easy to secure due to various practical reasons that the companies have, one of which is short duration of the class (10 to 11 weeks).