Enhancing Student Learning through Extracurricular Energy Projects

Abstract

Caitlyn Clark is a first year graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. Her research involves using particle image velocimetry techniques for various flow analyses. She is also a recent alumni of Western Kentucky University where she served as a thermo-fluids research assistant. During her undergraduate career she carried out multiple research projects funded through internal grants and industry sponsorships. Secondly, an internal student grant was awarded to allow a student researcher to develop a relationship between leakage areas, pressures, and flow rates. Understanding how these elements correlate will provide an understanding of energy consumption in residential, commercial and industrial settings due to building envelope construction and maintenance/aging flaws.Halton Company manufactures kitchen ventilation hoods, which are sized for commercial kitchen use. This being the case, it was impractical to obtain a hood sized for use in the university laboratory. Therefore, a scaled-down model was designed and built so that the results from laboratory research could be correlated to commercial sized applications. All kitchen ventilation systems require two main parts; an exhaust air moving device (AMD) and effluent collection hood. In order to recreate these items, before testing of the scaled-down hood could begin, an air flow bench was developed and characterized to replicate the exhaust AMD system, which was then coupled to the scaled down version of the kitchen ventilation hood.To study the effects of leakage areas on energy consumption in building envelopes, a "blower door" simulation test bed was purchased with the grant funds. This test bed included "windows" or "apertures", which allowed for various leakage geometries to be placed in the envelope of the structure. Along with this, the exterior structure and its cover included different pressure taps so that the internal static pressure within the structure may be determined at various locations. To complete the test bed, all of the instruments required to conduct a blower door test -an air moving device, differential and flow measuring device, blower door frame and covering -were included in the performance measure.An important aspect of these projects was the ability of the ME Program to provide an undergraduate student valuable learning experiences by managing and executing these projects as an extracurricular activity. The learning experiences, present throughout the projects, consisted of both project management and technical aspects. Assessment of outcomes of student learning from these real world energy applications was also performed.

Assessing the Culture of Engineering Student Project Teams

“…There are a wide variety of tools focused on engineering student team dynamics generally, typically intended for in-class project team use [3]- [6]; there are also studies devoted to the relationship between extracurricular engineering activities and learning or success [7]- [10]. However, there is a gap in assessment tools intended specifically for extra-curricular project team culture.…”