Aerospace Engineering Seniors Appreciate Updates to Experimental Projects Course

Posted: June 1, 2014

Inlet Install Action Shot.jpg — The "Serpentine Inlet Flow Control" project team utilizes the department

A new two-semester Experimental Projects course, designed for senior-level undergraduates, was "beta-tested" over the course of the past two years to better address the popular Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate (CDIO) initiatives that are beginning to serve as the educational framework for the next generation of aerospace engineers. Through improved hands-on exercises, this capstone course has moved away from lab demonstrations and the analysis of legacy data and now positions seniors to have more relevant "project team" experience to reference during job interviews. Ohio State's Aerospace Engineering students now consider the combination of computational and experimental techniques a step forward in helping them master the relevant methods, processes, and techniques necessary for CDIO and for documenting research projects that address the investigation of a hypothesis.

The "Serpentine Inlet Flow Control" project team utilizes the department's instructional wind tunnel to carry out testing.
By taking students beyond the classroom and beyond the textbook, they are now challenged to:

Formulate the overall objectives and success criteria for an experimental/computational assessment of a hypothesis about the natural world.
Develop (as a team) strategy and tactics for design of a research plan to achieve these objectives
Implement (as a team) the detailed research plan
Evaluate (as a team) the results to determine if the hypothesis was indeed valid
Effectively communicate (orally and in writing) the key aspects of the project, from concept to end goal.

Brach Polen, who completed the course this past academic year and was hired by GE Aviation after graduation, had high praise for the course. He informed Professor Jeffrey Bons, one of the architects of the new course, that he referred to the course more than any other when, during the course of job interviews, he was asked questions about group work, leadership, hands-on experiences, etc. He was additionally happy to have been given the opportunity to utilize the instructional wind tunnel that was aquired to elevate the active learning component of the Aerospace Engineering curriculum.
In the past academic year, 15 student teams completed the Experimental Projects course. Six of those teams received financial support from the U.S. Air Force, Orbital Research, Competitive Swim Products, and Boeing. In addition, the Air Force Institute of Technology and GE were in-kind sponsors.
Not only has the course given students the freedom to be creative in selecting their CDIO project, it has given them greater exposure to ANSYS/FLUENT and XFLR exercises, and provided more time in the student machine shop, where they are able to construct any required apparatus or necessary parts for their projects.