Surveying students
For some civil engineering undergraduates, mapping out plans for summer break will be on hold for a few more weeks.
Rather than join peers in Daytona Beach, Fla., or go home after finals, the 23 students enrolled in the CEE 215L summer course spent the afternoon of May 7 working in teams scattered across campus surveying the land.
According to Deogratias Eustace, the course adviser, students are challenged to apply knowledge of surveying techniques and processes from prior theoretical courses to hands-on, practical situations.
“These students are making great strides in their area,” Eustace said. “They’re all committed to this, which certainly helps.”
Civil engineering majors are required to complete the course to graduate.
Starting next week, the class will be working at Mount St. John’s in Kettering, Ohio. There, students will gain real-world experience in creating topographical maps.
Owned by the Marianist brothers, Mount St. John houses a seminary and retreat center situated on a 150-acre piece of land. Eustace said the brothers requested the students’ help so they could avoid the possibility of extensively harming the grass around campus.
The professor said the brothers look forward to finding out how their land really looks.
To the civil engineering students at UD, it’s all about making business fun again.
“It’s nice because it’s hands-on experience,” Don Wilson, a junior civil engineering major, said. “We’re starting to see the method to the madness.”
A Nobel soul
Notebook in hand, I leaned close to hear the soft-spoken words of a humble 84-year-old scientist. Winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry in the twilight of his life hadn’t gone to Charles Pedersen’s head.
“What I did, I did well,” he told me after UD President Brother Raymond Fitz, S.M., presented him with an honorary master’s degree in a living room full of family and friends in Salem, N.J., in 1989. “I worked in a peculiar way and things worked out. If you have an abnormal way of doing things, you do have an advantage because you’re not imitating anybody else. If you have innovation, then you’re relatively safe.
“But it doesn’t mean you necessarily have anything good,” he quipped.
Pedersen ’26 is part of the 2012 inaugural class who will be inducted into the School of Engineering’s Hall of Fame at a campus gala Friday, part of a celebration of the school’s 100th anniversary. Also honored will be John McHale ’78, Charles Wilke ’40, Emerson Climate Technologies and The Kettering Family Philanthropies.
Pedersen shared the Nobel Prize for discovering crown ethers during a long career at DuPont. Today, crown ethers are being used in everyday applications from isolating and removing extremely small yet harmful concentrations of mercury in drinking water to helping identify potassium in blood samples to aid in early diagnosis heart disease.
Pedersen, who died eight months after the living room gathering, turned down an honorary doctorate from his alma mater. When I asked him how he wanted history to remember him, he said, “The only honest thing I can say is as a man who knew what he could do.”
Engineering students soar in aircraft competition
Almost a year later, two Flyers received the trophy recognizing their success in an international aircraft design competition.
Last spring, John Puttmann ’10 and Brian Cranston ’10 traveled to England to present their two-seat electric airplane at the IT FLIES UK competition. Traveling with them were Andrew McClinton ’13, Eric Fuerst ’13 and Brian Walsh ’13, who submitted their design for the C130 Hercules military transport plane that won first place in the IT FLIES USA competition.
Each team was responsible for explaining its design to pilots from the Royal Air Force, who then tested it. The judging was based on the accuracy with which the plane flew.
About a dozen teams participated, but it was Puttmann and Cranston’s conceptual plane that received top honors. The duo started planning the aircraft over a year ago in fall 2010.
“I’m very proud of the students,” said Tony Saliba, dean of the School of Engineering. “They represented the University very well. To go overseas and compete against other teams is a real tribute to their efforts, but also to the well-rounded education they are receiving here.”
Trash to life-saving treasure
For a little less than $5 a day, using six newspapers the size of the Dayton Daily News, ETHOS students Jennifer Dodaro, Dan Kemlage and Claire Ellerhorst helped families in underdeveloped countries cook for a week and save lives.
“They normally throw everything and anything into the stove — plastic bottles, wood,” Dodaro said. The plastic melts too quickly and villagers most often have to walk miles carrying heavy loads of wood.
A 15-minute walk for a light load of papers is changing that. The students formed the six newspapers into 10 logs, soaked them, inserted them into a press and allowed them to dry. The logs burn cleaner and don’t require much back-breaking work.
The World Health Organization estimates 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using solid fuels (wood, animal dung, crop waste and coal) in open fires and leaky stoves. Nearly 2 million people a year die prematurely from indoor air pollution. Nearly half the deaths among children younger than 5 years old from acute lower respiratory infections are from indoor air pollution.
During the summer, ETHOS 33 students worked in 11 different countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. When these three students returned to Dayton, they left the town of Comitancillo, Guatemala, breathing a little easier.
Shelter from the heat
The National Science Foundation funded a STEM program this summer that brought elementary and high school teachers from the Miami Valley region together with UD engineering faculty. The program had two goals: to sponsor projects beneficial to economic success and to bring hands-on learning into the classroom to inspire the next generation of engineering students.
One project aimed to reduce energy consumption at St. Vincent de Paul Gateway Shelter. One teacher explained the beginning of the idea process, likening it to shooting a paintball gun – the group was hitting the target but splattering a vast area. To narrow its focus the group organized its solutions into eight categories: windows, solar, water, air flow, lighting and landscaping.
When giving the group a tour of the shelter, program director Ann Goebel kept repeating, “This is our home. We live here.” So out of 10 requirements, the teachers made safety the top priority, followed by energy conservation, cost to implement and user-friendliness.
The group discovered its strongest solution was a reflective roofing material to deflect sunlight. Teachers created a plywood prototype and tested four materials by recording the roof’s temperature every five minutes for an hour.
A metalized film called BoPET – essentially a silver space blanket – provided the best results in keeping the prototype cooler than the air temperature. The group recommended further testing but agreed that, with enough time, their reflective roof idea could help reduce energy consumption by keeping St. Vincent de Paul Gateway Shelter cool.
Not just any father and son
A new statue of St. Joseph carrying Jesus graces the entry to the School of Engineering on campus. Tomorrow’s dedication of the statue during Reunion Weekend will kick off a yearlong celebration of the engineering school’s 100th anniversary. Today, the school enrolls a record number of students and performs more sponsored research than any Catholic engineering school in the country.
Motorcycle allure
Whether it’s the screaming whine of a sport bike or the loud rumble of a chopper, the noise of a motorcycle is part of its allure.
So I needed no apology from the team of University of Dayton engineering students who opted not to include an exhaust pipe or damper with the internal combustion engine they added to an all-electric motorcycle.
“It’s really loud,” they said.
Well, that’s what makes it fun.
Undergraduate teams from four U.S. colleges — UD, Brigham Young University, Colorado State University and University of California-Davis — showed off their hybrid engine designs at UD Arena today for the Dayton-based Innovative Scientific Solutions, in conjunction with Innovative Scientific Solutions and the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Their task had been to convert the all-electric power system of a Zero motorcycle into a hybrid system. Two teams added an internal combustion engine, and two added hydrogen fuel cells.
The designs were crude — a one-gallon gas can duct-taped to the seat; two large, jetpack-like canisters filled with hydrogen bolted to the rear fender — but the science was anything but.
The UD squad added a generator and model airplane motor to their bike, using a constant 5,600 rpms of internal combustion to recharge their battery on the go. Miles per single charge improved 40 percent.
The UC-Davis team used a screen to filter out electrons from hydrogen molecules. When the electrons found their way around the filter, they created energy that could be transferred to the battery. And when the electrons rejoined the hydrogen molecules, they combined with oxygen to create water: the motorcycle’s only exhaust.
All of the designs were much more efficient and environmentally friendly than the standard sportbike or chopper. And the hydrogen hybrids were practically silent — the gentle clicking of the chain the only sound of movement.
Odd as it was to witness a silent motorcycle, these bikes still had what counts: powerful off-the-line torque; the maneuverability of two wheels and a light frame; speed at the flick of the wrist. And the students got to modify their bikes to improve efficiency and power.
You know, that sounds like a lot of fun, too.
Engineering project sustains Tanzanian school
When senior Steven Brophy enjoyed a cup of tea made on a stove he reconstructed for a school in Tanzania, he knew that living in slums for two months was well worth it.
Not because the tea was delicious, but because the four stoves working by the end of Brophy’s summer 2010 trip provide the school with improved technology. Brophy designed the project himself based on the engineering department’s ETHOS (Engineers for Technical Humanitarian Opportunities for Service-Learning) program. The University funded his venture.
“Firewood is super expensive and hard to find in Tanzania,” Brophy said. “By using this appropriate technology the school can sustain itself and save money. It is three times less expensive.”
Brophy repaired the system thatruns on cow manure — a resource already available to the school — and provides a gas burner for the kitchen.
“I was a little doubtful for how prepared I was,” he said. “I didn’t know too much about the system so I researched it and used my handy skills.”
While in Africa, Brophy also went on three safaris, climbed mountains, visited Zanzabar Island, and volunteered in Kenya for 10 days.
“At the end of my trip the maintenance manager at the school told me he was really glad that I was here,” Brophy said. “He was doubtful at first, so it was really good to hear him say that.”
Building of the Bronx Bombers
At the Yankees’ 2009 home opener, one fan in the stands had the perfect view of all it takes to build a ballpark.
The high-rises of New York City pulled Mark Pulsfort ’74 back to the East Coast after his UD graduation. Something about their design and the way they can rise up from a relatively tiny footprint on a Manhattan street corner fascinated both the child who played with Tinker Toys and the adult who graduated with a civil engineering degree.
But the Yankees trump even the tallest skyscraper.
The vice president and deputy operations manager for the New York business unit of Turner Construction oversaw the three-year planning and construction of the new Yankee Stadium, which is now entertaining its second season of baseball fans. As general contractor, Pulsfort and his Turner crew turned to 3-D building information modeling to handle the complexity of a project with such a tight time line — so tight that foundational work had to begin before design plans were finalized. “This was the first job to extensively use the technology,” he said of BIM, which is now common on complex construction projects.
Such projectwide coordination allowed Turner to flag 10,000 potential clashes that could be solved before they could impact construction — saving time and money and allowing contractors to optimize material ordering and fabrication.
Pulsfort is using BIM on his current projects, including a new 34-acre police academy campus in Queens and the renovation — from infrastructure to concessions to luxury boxes — of Madison Square Garden.
Pulsfort loves a challenge, and the complexity of Yankee Stadium helped raise that project to the top of his favorites list. But for a lifelong Yankees fan, it meant something even more: “It’s exciting — knowing the history of the old stadium, what the Yankees represent, the records. Now there will be new players and history going forward, and I’m very proud to be a part of that.”
Horse sense
Project-based learning teaches students to be able and adaptable engineers. This spring, it also helped horses and their disabled riders.
It was time for the test, and the engineering technology majors were stuck with Garth. The yellow horse stood 14.3 hands high and had a nasty habit of biting anyone on the far end of his lead. Garth was going to prove whether their semester’s work — designing and building an assisted lift device to help a disabled rider mount a horse — met all the project specifications, including being safe for the rider dangling 6 feet overhead and unobtrusive enough to not spook Garth and other horses.
At risk was not just a grade in their senior design course. They also wanted a working device they could give their client to help at facilities such as Cincinnati Therapeutic Riding and Horsemanship, a nonprofit riding center helping those with special needs, from children with cerebral palsy to adults with multiple sclerosis.
“This is the first time I’ve been able to assemble everything they’ve ever taught us into one project,” says Chris Powers, an industrial engineering technology major. “I’m allergic to horses. And I am so happy I’ve chosen this project.”
The service project melded innovative and entrepreneurial engineering principles in the capstone class of a multiyear, project-based curriculum that is garnering UD national attention as a university developing best practices in engineering education. The goal of project-based learning is to not just help a riding center — it is to help the next generation of engineers to solve problems facing business and our world.
A GOOD IDEA
The foundations of a UD engineering education, says Dean Tony Saliba, remain technical competency, liberal arts study and leadership training. “Around that, the School is developing in students of all majors an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset through course study, service opportunities and project-based learning.”
The story of the assisted lift project is the story of undergraduate engineering curriculum development during the past three years. But the assisted lift project is not unique; each year, entrepreneurs, businesses, industries and nonprofits approach UD in hopes that student
engineers will help them create or optimize products and processes. The new curriculum includes courses for first-year, junior and senior students who approach projects chosen by their professors with strategies appropriate for their level of education.
Jennifer Reid, a 1991 graduate and adjunct instructor in chemical engineering, suggested the assisted lift project for first-year students based on her own experience as a certified instructor with NARHA, the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association. Riding therapy can provide physical, occupational, psychological and speech rehabilitation for children and adults. But riders with mobility issues struggle to mount the horse — and the instructors struggle, too. Reid — at 5’3” and 115 pounds — has had to lift riders weighing up to 175 pounds. This problem begged for a creative solution.
First, the freshmen tackled the challenge in fall 2008. Reid left the problem statement broad, allowing each team to creatively solve how to get a rider on a horse. Electrical engineering major Mike Rucci and his multidisciplinary team created a prototype out of PVC, cloth, metal and a bathroom towel ring. Their idea: a pole cemented into the ground around which winds a donut-shaped seat raised and lowered by an electric winch.
“As freshman engineers, your thinking is always too complicated,” says Rucci, now a junior. He admits to some troubles moving the rider from seat to horse. But he attests to the power of that project, of moving from conceptual to actual early in his education. Now, while he’s buried in hermodynamics and calculus, he can envision how these equations will be applied to solving actual problems. “And,” he adds, “I still have the book” — Engineering Design: A Project-Based Introduction.
The assisted lift project then graduated to the Innovation Center in fall 2009 where three mechanical engineering students and two business students built on the ideas of students like Rucci. They focused on research, learning from UD’s doctor of physical therapy program and Therapeutic Riding Institute of Dayton. Their conceptual design and research confirmed that nonprofit riding centers, which often cannot afford expensive commercial lift devices, need a simple, low-cost solution.
The assisted lift was a good idea. Now it was time to build a prototype.
GARTH’S TURN
Much of the senior project-based learning happens in the School’s Innovation Center, where all disciplines come together to encounter, debate, address, investigate and solve multifaceted problems.
In part because of the center’s success, the School of Engineering was named a Kern Entrepreneurial Education Network partner, a distinction that highlights both the School’s best practices and a shared belief that entrepreneurial engineers are vital to business success and the strength of the U.S. work force. (See “Best in class.”)
In January 2010, the senior engineering technology majors were assigned the assisted lift device. They had the freshmen’s ideas and the juniors’ research. But they also had their own perspectives as students majoring in manufacturing, mechanical and industrial engineering technology. One is the son of a welder. Another, the son of a horseback rider. They were excited to begin.
And they were stumped. Their client was associate professor Margie Pinnell, a horseback rider whose daughter was a volunteer at Bridge Riding for the Disabled. Pinnell taught Rucci’s first-year course and funded the senior project through a Learn Lead Serve grant from the School of Engineering. She gave the seniors wide parameters. And they just couldn’t focus their project proposal.
As senior Dan Hundt says, “We struggled a bit.” They rewrote and further As senior Dan Hundt says, “We
struggled a bit.” They rewrote and further revised their proposal with encouragement from their professor, Design and Manufacturing Clinic Coordinator Becky Blust. They then offered several designs, analyzed the options based on weighted scores attributed to project goals and chose a final design. They applied what they had learned and it worked. Says project team leader Andrew Babey, “There was nothing that shocked me.”
Except when it came to welding. The heat caused the steel to twist and the post to wedge itself tight into a bracket it was supposed to slide through. After a sweaty half hour of whacks with a sledgehammer, the students freed the bound post. They welded on a tension rod to square up their device and moved on to field testing.
One sunny day in April, the students drove a borrowed SUV to Milford, Ohio, and parked it on the gravel drive in front of the CTRH horse barn. They assembled the lift device: a steel base member that fits into the hitch for added stability; a steel plate foot and a vertical post; a horizontal arm attached at a pivot point; the hydraulic jack to raise and lower the arm; and the harness on the arm’s end in which the rider sits. A practice run with a wooden horse proved the device could raise and lower a rider. Now it was Garth’s turn.
Lexi James, CTRH program director, clipped herself into the harness. Industrial engineering major David Toppston pumped the jack 81 times to raise her 6 feet in the air. Then Garth approached. He fussed on his first pass — not happy to be told where to go — but gave in on the second pass and calmly stood there while James was lowered and her harness released. She swung her leg from a side-
saddle to traditional riding position, and she and Garth rode away. Success.
“The horse didn’t even see the lift,” Toppston says. “It felt great to go from problems to proof of concept. It worked and all of us did our parts.”
Business students also participated in this multidisciplinary project. Their business plan helped outline the market potential of the lift, complimenting the technical feasibility in the final report.
The students earned an A-minus — the minus for their belated project proposal — and accolades from professors, client and
horse therapy centers alike. The lift device may be further refined in next year’s capstone class — adapting its portable design to a more stationary application — and plans for the existing device will be shared with partner participating riding centers to see if they want to build one of their own.
But the class was about more than a lift, about more than helping local nonprofit centers and their riders. In the end, it’s about an egineering education.
For Hundt, it’s about making him into an engineer of exceptional value to his future employer: “What I can offer to a company is thinking about things practically — where conceptual design meets actual product.”
That makes him a problem solver. And a problem seer. And an engineer for a new generation of challenges.
