Design and manufacturing of nozzles and airfoil shapes for compressible flow visualizations in a new engineering course

Abstract

To empower students in engineering and improve their understanding of integrated computational design and experimental testing, the authors developed a new course for undergraduate engineering students. The course objective is for mechanical engineering students to gain an understanding of how airplanes fly and nozzles work by designing, modeling, manufacturing, and testing prototype airfoils and nozzles. These example problems are meaningful and attractive. The active, project-based learning approach promises better learning outcomes and outcome retention than passive approaches. The paper discusses the course structure including computer simulations and on paper calculations for the students, prototyping and manufacturing models from computer-aided design (CAD) representations, and experimental validation with a water table experiment. The planned course evaluation and assessment of student learning are presented. The course is taught at the University of California Davis in Spring Quarter 2017 for the first time.