ME4842 Mechanical Engineering Systems Laboratory

Catalog description:

MECH ENG 4842 Mechanical Engineering Systems (LAB 2.0) A laboratory course focusing on experimental design and evaluation of complete mechanical engineering systems. Analysis of both mechanical and thermodynamic systems is included. Emphasis is on evaluating system performance and improving student written and oral communication skills. Prerequisites: Mech Eng 4840, 3521, 3131, 3525, 3313.

What we really do in ME4842:

ME4842 is a senior-level capstone laboratory course with content spanning all areas of mechanical engineering. Student groups initially conduct a few 'standard' experiments and communicate the results via short written reports. Next, students design and propose a final experiment of their own – first in a prelimanary oral presentation, and then via a formal written proposal. After the proposal is accepted, students conduct and report the results of their experiment in a final symposium poster session during finals week. The proposed final experiments must either validate a mathematical model with measureable parameters against experimentally measured data, or estimate the model parameters from measured data. Hardware and software support for Arduino-based data acquisition and control systems is available, as is Python support for parameter estimation – see below.  All other information and materials, including the course text, are available to enrolled students on S&T's Canvas portal.

Arduino temperature measurement and control codes on GitHub: https://github.com/dsstutts/ATMC.git

Dan's Python page: http://web.mst.edu/~stutts/PYTHON/python_page.html

Levenberg-Marquardt nonlinear least squares example in Python on GitHub: https://github.com/dsstutts/LMTest.git

Dan's LaTeX Vault for information on the LaTeX typsetting system: http://web.mst.edu/~stutts/LATEX/LaTeXVault.htm (All ME4842-Sponsored project reports must be typeset in LaTeX)

Dan's Maple Vault for information on and examples of the use of Maple: http://web.mst.edu/~stutts/MapleVault.htm

Sponsors