Mechanical Engineering Technical Elective Courses

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Mechanical Engineering Technical Elective Courses

** This document only provides course descriptions for technical electives offered in the ME department.

** Please refer to the Mechanical Engineering Technical Elective Program document for more information

(http://www.me.umn.edu/education/undergraduate/curriculum.shtml)

On this document, the technical electives are categorized into Environmental, Design & Manufacturing and Thermal Sciences.

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Environmental

Course Code: ME 5101

Course Title: Vapor Cycle Systems

Course Description:

This course is divided into two half-semester courses, one that focuses on power systems and the other that emphasizes refrigeration and heat pump systems. Both consider thermodynamic cycles where the working fluid changes phase.

The portion of the course that covers vapor power cycles focuses on steam systems. The simple Rankine cycle is followed by more complex and realistic cycles including the supercritical Rankine cycle and those with intercoolers and reheat. Cogeneration and combined power cycles are also discussed. Fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources are included as are various emission control methodologies.

In the refrigeration and heat pump portion, the majority of the time is spent on vapor compression refrigeration cycles including multistage systems and those that use

refrigerant mixtures. The major components are discussed including various compressor designs, alternative refrigerants and capacity control methods. Air-to-air heat pumps are simulated using software that requires iteration to determine the equilibrium evaporating and condensing temperatures in the heat exchangers. Absorption and cryogenic systems are also included.

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Course Title: Thermal Environmental Engineering

Thermodynamic properties of moist air; psychrometric charts; HVAC systems; solar energy; human thermal comfort; indoor air quality; heating and cooling loads in buildings. Topics include: review of heat transfer, thermodynamics and fluid flow, thermodynamic properties of moist air, psychrometric processes and applications, psychrometer and humidity measurements, human thermal comfort and indoor air quality, winter design heat loss, solar Radiation as it applies to HVAC applications, instantaneous heat gains in buildings, instantaneous cooling loads and energy estimation methods for buildings.

Course Title: HVAC System Design

This course focuses on the engineering design principles of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems used in buildings. Students are divided into teams and then design the complete HVAC system for an actual mid-sized building located in the Twin Cities area to include specifying the central equipment and laying out and sizing the ductwork and hydronic piping systems. Teams are assigned to nearby participating HVAC design firms who provide workstations, software and design mentoring assistance for the students. In addition to accepted design practice as promulgated by ASHRAE, the students learn about building codes and standards and evolving concepts such as green buildings, LEED certification, and alternative energy options including wind and solar energy. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to design the entire mechanical system for a building using state-of-the-art technology. Design procedures are reviewed for heat exchangers, cooling towers, hydronic systems and air handling systems. Students design the HVAC system for an actual commercial building. The course is targeted to senior undergraduate and beginning engineering graduate students.

Course Title: Aerosol/Particle Engineering

ME 5113 is a lecture-based course which covers properties, behavior, measurement and control technologies of airborne particles. The main object of this course is to familiarize students with some of the fundamentals of aerosol science and technology and their application in environmental engineering, industrial hygiene, and air pollution control. Topics include kinetic theory of gases, aerosol mechanics, inertial separation, Brownian motion and diffusion, particle statistics, electrical properties, condensation and

evaporation, coagulation, filtration, etc. Upper-level undergraduate students who want to get some common senses of this field and entry-level graduate students who work on aerosol-related research projects are recommended to take this course.

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Course Title: Cleanroom Technology and Particle Monitoring

ME 5116 (Cleanroom technology and particle monitoring) include both lectures and labs. It covers particle-related technology used in cleanroom environment. Topics include contamination control in cleanrooms, flow and particle monitoring in cleanrooms,

particle deposition on surfaces, filter efficiency measurement, liquid-borne particle measurement, ect.

Course Code: ME5133

Course Title: Aerosol Measurement Laboratory

ME 5133 include both lectures and labs. ME 5133 aims to provide students with hands on experience in using various types of instruments for aerosol measurement. Topics include flow measurement and calibration, leak check, aerosol generation, sampling, and

transport, airborne particle size distribution measurement, and liquid-borne particle measurement and filtration. There would be a final design project in which students use the measurement techniques learned to solve an aerosol-related problem in real life. Students are recommended to take ME 5113 first so that they can better appreciate the course materials presented in ME 5133.

Course Title: Solar Thermal Technologies

This course is a practical application of the fundamental knowledge acquired in an

undergraduate heat transfer course to solar thermal energy systems. Students will expand upon what they learned in heat transfer to develop the tools needed to perform energy system analysis and computations. In addition to material covered in lecture, students’ knowledge is supplemented by two projects during the semester. The first is an

independent research project on a topic in renewable energy not covered in class, and the second is a design project that will integrate various aspects of the course and will provide them with an experience similar to what you might expect in practice. Students are required to attend and participate in all lectures. The workload for the semester is 15 weekly homework assignments, two project reports, one or two project presentations, a midterm exam, and a final exam. The tentative grading breakdown is as follows, but is subject to change each semester: 55% exams (midterm and final), 15% homework, 15% research project, and 15% design project.

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Design & Manufacturing

Course Title: Human Factors and Work Analysis

Human factors engineering (ergonomics), methods engineering, work measurement. Displays, controls, instrument layout, supervisory control. Anthropometry, work

physiology, biomechanics. Noise, illumination, toxicology. Operations analysis, motion study, time standards.

Course Title: Computer-Assisted Product Realization

The intent of this course is to provide the full product design-process design-part

production-product evaluation experience. Emphasis is on the use of engineering science concepts and models, and commercial quality computer-based tools. With the successful completion of the course each student will have gained experience in most aspects of part and process design, become familiar with the capabilities of integrated CAD/CAM systems, completed an in-depth experience with one of the part or process design activities, evaluated part and process designs in terms of quantitative metrics, evaluated part and process models by comparison of predicted and measured quantities, have worked in a team to produce a product and provide a technical justification for the part and process designs. In terms of the Mechanical Engineering curriculum outcomes, this course, provides an in-depth consideration of process design, emphasizes the integration of part and process design, contains laboratory activities in part design, process design and product and tooling production, includes experimental activities in material

characterization and in testing the parts produced, provides the opportunity for students to work in teams, requires written and verbal reporting of results.

Course Title: Materials in Design

Description: The course will stress selection of materials to fulfill specific design and functional requirements, to guard against progressive and/or catastrophic failure, and to meet design-manufacturing requirements. The course aims to provide the theoretical and science background for selection of materials used in engineered products and to provide practical guidelines for material selection in the design context. Similar considerations apply for process selection. Since polymeric materials have come into extensive engineering use in machines and consumer products, discussion of design principles applicable to polymers (and rubbers) will be an integral part of this course. The first part of the course will stress materials selection. The second part of the course will focus on polymeric materials and design with polymers. The final part of the course will focus on design against failure

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Course Title: Introduction to Finite Element Modeling, Analysis, and Design

Introduction to virtual simulation, verification and validation; Modeling and design through simulation based predictive analysis; Numerical Methods; Finite Elements and their role in Engineering; Conceptual, preliminary and detailed designs; 1-D models and comparison to analytical solutions in Stress analysis and heat conduction; Finite elements for bars, beams in general 3-dimensional space; Weighted residual methods and

variational methods; two dimensional finite elements with triangles and quadrilateral elements; Isoparametric formulations; Applications to Engineering analysis; extensions to axisymmetric and three dimensional finite elements for engineering computations;

modeling issues, loads and boundary conditions.

Course Title: Computer-Aided Engineering

This is a project-based course on using computers to assist or automate engineering design and analysis tasks. It covers four areas of computer applications in engineering: computer graphics, design optimization, finite element analysis (static structural applications), and design documentation. The first two projects require students to develop software, while the last two projects make use of commercially available software. This course utilizes a programming language such as Matlab or C++ for the first two projects (no prior experience required beyond CSci 1113). The second two projects involve the use of ANSYS finite element software and Creo Elements CAD software.

Course Title: Advanced Mechanism Design

This class provides students with a background in theoretical kinematics and its

application to the analysis and synthesis of planar mechanisms. Type synthesis methods for determining the best mechanism for a specific application are introduced. “Burmester theory” for precision position synthesis of four-bar and multi-loop mechanisms is

presented. Principles and applications of “curvature theory” are reviewed. “Solution rectification” methods for separating useful mechanisms from problematic ones during linkage synthesis are introduced. “Higher order synthesis” methods for designing linkages to produce prescribed velocities or accelerations as well as displacements are described. Modern computer tools for linkage synthesis and analysis, such as

“LINCAGES” and “ADAMS”, are introduced. Course topics are utilized in a project where student teams design a linkage for a real application, or a piece of software to design linkages. Grades are based on the project, homework assignments and exams.

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Course Title: Stress Analysis, Sensing, and Transducers

The course covers the experimental determination of strain and stress using electrical resistance strain gages and photoelasticity. The characterization, selection and use of sensors for mechanical measurements are discussed in lecture and demonstrated in the laboratory, e.g., strain gages, load cells, accelerometers and wireless sensor systems. Finite element stress analysis is introduced in the comparison of calculated and measured stress fields. The course project is an application of the measurement techniques to a suggested mechanical engineering problem or, preferably, to a problem of interest defined by the student. Grading is based on written examinations, lab reports and the course project.

Course Title: Vibration Engineering

Apply vibration theory to design; optimize isolators, detuning mechanisms, viscoelastic suspensions and structures. Use modal analysis methods to describe free vibration of complex systems, relating to both theoretical and test procedures.

Course Title: Analog and Digital Control

Continuous and discrete time feedback control systems. Frequency response, stability, poles and zeros; transient responses; Nyquist and Bode diagrams; root locus; lead-lag and PID compensators, Nicols-Ziegler design method. Digital implementation aliasing; computer-aided design and analysis of control system.

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Course Title: Robotics

The course deals with four major components: the robot manipulator (or more commonly known as the robot arm), robot vehicles, image processing and embedded computing. Lecture topics fall into two of these categories - the manipulator and image processing. Topics covered under robot manipulators include the mathematics of a 6 degree of

freedom machine operating in a 3D world and the control of robot position, velocity, path and force. These require knowledge about their forward and inverse kinematics, the mathematics of homogeneous transformations and coordinate frames, the Jacobian and velocity control, task programming, computational issues related to robot control, determining path trajectories, reaction forces, manipulator dynamics and control. Topics under computer vision include: image sensors, digitization, preprocessing, thresholding, edge detection, segmentation, feature extraction, classification, frequency domain techniques, and 3D analysis. Main project: Design and implement a guidance controller for a truck. Skeleton code is provided. The goal is to write the remaining code needed to guide a virtual truck along a specified path on a given road. There will also be several smaller projects dealing with the computer vision part of the course. Prerequisite:

ME3281 System Dynamics and Control, or equivalent. Recommended: Background in C programming. However, it is possible to pick up what you need in the first few weeks of class.

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Thermal Sciences (Power & Propulsion, Thermodynamics, Heat

Transfer, Fluid Mechanics)

Course Title: Vapor Cycle Systems

This course is divided into two half-semester courses, one that focuses on power systems and the other that emphasizes refrigeration and heat pump systems. Both consider thermodynamic cycles where the working fluid changes phase.

The portion of the course that covers vapor power cycles focuses on steam systems. The simple Rankine cycle is followed by more complex and realistic cycles including the supercritical Rankine cycle and those with intercoolers and reheat. Cogeneration and combined power cycles are also discussed. Fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources are included as are various emission control methodologies.

In the refrigeration and heat pump portion, the majority of the time is spent on vapor compression refrigeration cycles including multistage systems and those that use

refrigerant mixtures. The major components are discussed including various compressor designs, alternative refrigerants and capacity control methods. Air-to-air heat pumps are simulated using software that requires iteration to determine the equilibrium evaporating and condensing temperatures in the heat exchangers. Absorption and cryogenic systems are also included.

Course Title: Solar Thermal Technologies

This course is a practical application of the fundamental knowledge acquired in an

undergraduate heat transfer course to solar thermal energy systems. Students will expand upon what they learned in heat transfer to develop the tools needed to perform energy system analysis and computations. In addition to material covered in lecture, students’ knowledge is supplemented by two projects during the semester. The first is an

independent research project on a topic in renewable energy not covered in class, and the second is a design project that will integrate various aspects of the course and will provide them with an experience similar to what you might expect in practice. Students are required to attend and participate in all lectures. The workload for the semester is 15 weekly homework assignments, two project reports, one or two project presentations, a midterm exam, and a final exam. The tentative grading breakdown is as follows, but is subject to change each semester: 55% exams (midterm and final), 15% homework, 15% research project, and 15% design project.

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Course Title: Case Studies in Thermal Engineering and Design

Real-world engineering problems are brought into the classroom. To solve problems of such real complexity, powerful computational tools are taught. These include ANSYS thermal (heat conduction), ANSYS structural and thermal stresses. The main part of the course is computational fluid dynamics (CFD). For this, CFX software is taught. These software codes are applied to numerous real-world problems. No prior experience with software is needed. No exams or quizzes. No textbook. Two projects. One-on-one computer lab help is available.

Course Title: Thermodynamics of Fluid Flow with Applications

This course provides a excellent review of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics as applied to gas flows experiencing large density variation. An informal name for the course could be 'gas dynamics' due to the unusual behavior displayed by gas flows in the presence of large density variations. These density variations can be caused by large pressure changes, very high temperature flows or simply due to unusual geometries. Students will learn about supersonic flow and the conditions necessary to sustain it. Students will also study the delivery of gases (e.g. natural gas) over very large distances as well as the impact of heat release in combustion systems. The course will also

introduce students to shock waves in both one and two dimensions.

Course Title: Computational Heat Transfer

Numerical solution of heat conduction and analogous physical processes. Development and use of a computer program to solve complex problems involving steady and unsteady heat conduction, fully developed flow and heat transfer in ducts, flow in porous media, and other special applications. Use of the computer program for design and optimization.

Course Title: Biological Transport Processes

Fluid, mass, and heat transport in biological systems. Mass transfer across membranes, fluid flow in capillaries, interstitium, veins and arteries. Biotransport issues in single cells and tissues, artificial organs, membrane oxygenators, and drug delivery applications.

Course Title: Introduction to Combustion

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10 Thermodynamics, kinetics and mass transport and pollutants in reacting systems.

Reactors, laminar and turbulent flames. Ignition,quenching and flames stability. Diffusion flames. Combustion in engines, furnaces and turbines.

Course Title: Internal Combustion Engines

In this course students will learn the fundamentals of the internal combustion engine. Beginning first with the air cycle then expanding to the combustion cycle (fuel-air cycle). The actual engine cycle is then covered. The next topics cover emissions, friction, air capacity, and fuel to air ratio. Components such as carburetors, fuel injection, and spark ignition are covered followed by diesel engines to wrap the course up.

Course Title: Gas Turbines

In this course, you apply math, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and some heat transfer experiences from your previous classes to the design and analysis of gas turbines. Fundamentals of the gas turbine engine are covered including cycles, components, component matching, and environmental considerations.

Course Title: Thermodynamics of Biological Systems

Students will reinforce an understanding of the general principals of thermodynamics. Topics include the second law of Thermodynamics, irreversible processes, chemical potential, phase changes, thermodynamic equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems (biological and phase change examples). Other topics are energy flows in biological systems as well as biofuels and alternative energy.