The paper presents a senior design project that engages in educational activities to enhance learning in green energy manufacturing, including construction of piezoelectric energy collector system and laboratory experiments in the efficient energy harvesting of the system. The goal of the senior design project was to engage students in real-world learning experiences for the design of energy harvesting as an initial stepping stone for the future construction of manufacturing plants in industry. The project design consists of stacks of piezoelectric sensors embedded within a wooden composite board to utilize roadway traffic. The design assures the piezoelectric material is subjected to strains and produces a charge used to supply voltage through the means of a harvesting circuit which charges capacitors and stores it in an onboard capacitor bank. A series of steps were taken to determine voltage, current, material properties and circuit configuration of the system. In order to maximize the potential of the piezoelectric energy harvesting system, a large amount of mechanical energy was present in order to harvest as much energy as possible. The higher the traffic volume, the more energy that can generated. The student learning outcome of this project was the successful design of the energy harvesting for collecting vibration energy. It provides an introduction to the different areas within engineering by including the mechanical design of a system to vibrate a piezoelectric device and the electrical conditioning and analysis of the piezoelectric energy input. For the sake of achieving the student learning outcomes, experiments were conducted, including sensor monitoring and process control. A concluding section discusses the student learning experiences during this project.
Dr. Richard Chiou is Associate Professor within the Engineering Technology Department at Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. He received his Ph.D. degree in the G.W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. His educational background is in manufacturing with an emphasis on mechatronics. In addition to his many years of industrial experience, he has taught many different engineering and technology courses at undergraduate and graduate levels. His tremendous research experience in manufacturing includes environmentally conscious manufacturing, Internet based robotics, and Web based quality. In the past years, he has been involved in sustainable manufacturing for maximizing energy and material recovery while minimizing environmental impact.
Irina Ciobanescu Husanu, Ph. D. is Assistant Clinical Professor with Drexel University, Engineering Technology program. Her area of expertise is in thermo-fluid sciences with applications in micro-combustion, fuel cells, green fuels and plasma assisted combustion. She has prior industrial experience in aerospace engineering that encompasses both theoretical analysis and experimental investigations such as designing and testing of propulsion systems including design and development of pilot testing facility, mechanical instrumentation, and industrial applications of aircraft engines. Also, in the past 10 years she gained experience in teaching ME and ET courses in both quality control and quality assurance areas as well as in thermal-fluid, energy conversion and mechanical areas from various levels of instruction and addressed to a broad spectrum of students, from freshmen to seniors, from high school graduates to adult learners. She also has extended experience in curriculum development. Dr Husanu developed laboratory activities for Measurement and Instrumentation course as well as for quality control undergraduate and graduate courses in ET Masters program. Also, she introduced the first experiential activity for Applied Mechanics courses. She is coordinator and advisor for capstone projects for Engineering Technology.
Michael Mauk is Assistant Professor in Drexel University's Engineering Technology program.
Dr. Bill Tseng is a Professor and Chair of Department of Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering at the UTEP. He is also a Director of Research Institute for Manufacturing & Engineering Systems, the host institute of Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center at UTEP. He received his two MSIE degrees (MFG & DS/OR) from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Iowa. Dr. Tseng is also a Certified Manufacturing Engineer from Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Dr. Tseng’s research area cover emergency management, systems engineering, computational intelligence/data analytics and cyber engineering technology. Over the years, he has served more than 10 million dollars as principle investigators sponsored by NSF, NIST, USDT, DoEd, KSEF and industry like LMCO, GM and Tyco Inc. Dr. Tseng delivered research results to many refereed journals such as IEEE Transactions, IIE Transactions, International Journal of Production Research, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, Expert Systems with Applications and other conferences (over 260 refereed publications). He is currently serving as an editor of Journal of Computer Standards & Interfaces (CSI) and editor boards of International Journal of Data Mining, Modeling and Management (JDMMM) and American Journal of Industrial and Business Management (AJIBM). He is currently a Senior Member of Institute of Industrial Engineers, Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the Division Chair of Manufacturing Division of American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). He is also actively involved in several consortia activities.
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