This year’s Design Exposition will be held at the James and Anne Duderstadt Center (formerly Media Union) 1:00-5:00 p.m., Thursday, April 15.
This year’s expo will showcase undergraduate design and manufacturing courses in Mechanical Engineering (ME 250, 350, and 450), and will be joined for the first time by students from the College of Engineering pilot course: Multidisciplinary System Design – ENG 450. Each of these courses features at least one design project that requires a creative application of fundamental engineering concepts toward the manufacture of proof-of-concept prototypes. These prototypes, and accompanying posters and presentations, will be displayed for the enjoyment of the engineering community and the general public.
Presentations range from component designs in ME 250, to mechanism designs in ME 350, and to full system designs in the senior capstone design courses ME 450 and ENG 450. For instance, ME 450 students have designed diverse and complex systems such as hybrid vehicle power electronics, bio-fuel cells, and even robotic snakes. And students from six different departments have worked together in the first offering of ENG 450 on proof-of-concept system demonstrations for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory, sponsored by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
A complete Design Expo brochure containing project descriptions and team members is available for download as a PDF file (Download it now) ( http://me.engin.umich.edu/news/news/DesignExpoW04.pdf ).
All of these projects are possible thanks to the active involvement of many faculty and industry sponsors. This interface to the “real world” provides a constant set of new challenges which feed the open-ended educational experience that prepares ME students for successful careers in engineering, regardless of discipline.