Case Studies

1. Analysis of a Diesel Engine
2. Experimental Determination of the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat
3. Refining the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat
4. Analysis of a Residential Heat Pump

Ethics Case Studies

1. Mount Dioxin

Case Studies

1. Calculating and Comparing the Output Power and the Indicated Power of a Simple IC Engine
2. Comparison of the Anemometer Mass Flow and the Thermal Mass Flow
3. Calculating Q (Heat)

Links

1. NASA: EngineSim software download

Case Studies

1. Drag Measurements for Ten Geometric Bodies
2. Drag Measurements on Round and Wing Tubes
3. Hydraulic Jump through a Sluice Gate
4. Optimal Drafting Position for Marathon Runner
5. Experiments on a Series of Symmetrical Joukowski Sections
6. Pressure Losses Across Evaporators
7. The Separating Turbulent Boundary Layer

Links

1. NASA: FoilSim II software download

Case Studies

1. Nusselt Number Correlation
2. Heat Transfer in a Triangular Duct

Ethics Case Studies

1. Nuclear Plant Heat Exchanger Problems

Case Studies

1. Torsional Pendulum: Determining Mass Moments of Inertia
2. Space Crank Application
3. The Story of Eighty-Four Minutes

Links

1. Brock Institute: Virtual Mechanisms Animated by Java
2. Museum of Science and Industry: Gears from the Century of Progress
3. Cornell: Kinematic Models for Design

Case Studies

1. Bolt Torque, Preload, and Strength
2. The Problem of the Perverse Pinion

Case Studies

1. Hunting Problems on a Dam Controlled Gate

Welcome to the Mechanical Engineering Case Studies website. This web site was developed with support from the Teaching and Learning Consortium at Penn State. Select your course from the list at the left to begin.

This web site is being developed to give undergraduate Mechanical Engineering students real engineering examples and experimental data in their lecture courses. This is done by using design calculations or experimental data completed by ME seniors in their design courses, lab courses, honors thesis, and Co-op (with permission from the company). Results from graduate student research or published experimental data are also used. This allows students to become familiar with data analysis and the inherent uncertainties in experimental measurements before entering the laboratory courses.

The case studies are formatted as a homework assignment. In some cases, the entire case study would be assigned for homework. In other cases, there are several similar sets of data and only one set of data would be assigned for homework. Each case study includes a description of the objectives, the experimental facility, and the experimental procedure used to obtain the data. When possible, photos and video clips are used to show the facility and experimental procedure. From the web site, students can download engineering drawings of the models used in the experiment and spreadsheets containing the experimental data. The web site describes the data analysis required in the assignment. Included in the data analysis may be nondimensionalization, statistical analysis, plotting the experimental data, and comparison of the experimental results with correlations found in the text.

In this case study web site you will also find several ethics case studies and several links that have been found for particular classes. A statistics tutorial gives a review of the statistical analysis that is used in several case studies.

I invite you to submit new case studies using the instructions and tools on this web site. I also welcome any comments or suggestions that you have. You can can find further information about this Case Study Web Site in our ASEE paper presented June 20, 2004. This ASEE paper was selected as best session paper.

Dr. Laura L. Pauley. P.E.
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Professor-in-Charge of Undergraduate Programs in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering
Penn State University
LPauley@psu.edu

Welcome to the Statistics Tutorial. To learn more about a statistical function, click on one of the links below.

1. Mean
2. Median
3. Mode
4. Variance and Standard Deviation
5. Binomial Distribution
6. Poisson Distribution
7. Normal Distribution
8. Student's T Distribution
9. Chi-Square Test

The Case Studies Website staff encourages instructors and researchers to contribute new case studies to the site. An authoring kit is available below which includes tools, samples, templates, and guidelines for formatting a case study file.

Case studies are entered in XML, a language similar to HTML for structuring text documents. XML may be edited in a text editor (such as Notepad), an XML editor, or the editor included in the authoring kit. An XML schema defines the tags used to format a case study.

The case studies authoring tools use Java™, the portable computing platform from Sun Microsystems. If you do not already have version 1.4.1 of the Java runtime environment installed on your system, you may download it by clicking the button to the right.

For more information about contributing case studies to this site, please contact Dr. Laura Pauley.