Undergraduate geotechnical engineering education of the 21st century

Forum papers are thought-provoking opinion pieces or essays founded in fact, sometimes containing speculation, on a civil engineering topic of general interest and relevance to the readership of the journal.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A finite element based tool to support the understanding of electromagnetism concepts

A significant pedagogical innovation in teaching and learning Electromagnetics in undergraduate engineering programmes is the resource to simulations, preferably interactive. A classical approach would require a vector calculus background and three-dimensional geometrical resourcefulness, typically not maturated by undergraduate students. On the other hand, interactive simulations are able to support a meaningful visual insight into the fundamental laws and concepts of electromagnetic theory. This work describes an educational tool which relies in an open source graphical user interface to finite element software, able to provide interaction, accuracy and visual interpretations of the Electromagnetics fundamental laws and classical problems, able to hasten the students’ understanding, by lessening the abstract nature of vector fields, level curves and gradient fields. This tool is to be further developed to gather a set of vast examples and typical problems, able to support a web-based training platform.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UIDB/05757/2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Teaching Magneto-Thermal Coupling Using Thomson\u27s Levitating Ring Experiment

The levitating ring experiment is presented as a method for teaching magneto-thermal interactions. The complete electromagnetic model of a problem is given, together with the insight in thermal analysis. The factors for determining the vertical displacements are explained, and an elegant method for indirect measurement of induced current in the ring is introduced. The whole apparatus is explained in detail so an accurate computer model can be made. Several simulation approaches are given, and all prove the applicability in teaching coupled problems using laboratory experiments and computer modeling

An Applied Electromagnetics Course with a Conceiving-Designing-Implementing-Operating Approach in Engineering Education

This paper describes and discusses the implementation of a project-based undergraduate course on applied electromagnetics in electronics engineering with a conceiving-designing-implementing-operating (CDIO) approach involving active project-based learning (PBL). The course, which requires a combination of mathematical and physics concepts for its completion, allows students to understand the principles of electromagnetic transmission theory in wireless communication systems. This paper presents the course proposal, its project description, and results hinting at the relationship with the CDIO process. The proposed projects allow students to engage in core concepts such as complex vectors, Maxwell’s equations, boundary conditions, Poynting\u27s theorem, uniform plane waves, reflection and transmission of waves, waveguides, cavity resonators, and computer-assisted design. The proposed methodology results suggest that students lowered their perception of the difficulty of the course, and most students recognized a better learning process of the core concepts for this course. In addition, students’ final course grades showed an average improvement of approximately 6% compared with the final grades of other groups with different methodologies

Commission B (fields and waves) international survey about EM education

Journal ArticleCommission B has the terms of reference "Fields and waves", which have been well established on the basis of electromagnetism and Maxwell's equations. Experts in this area need a firm basis in mathematics and physics as well as their historical background; though the subjects are sometimes too heavy and time consuming to attract many in the younger generation, one of the urgent missions of Commission B is to foster young talent. With this background, we are conducting an international survey about the state of electromagnetics education. Our plan is to collect information, to analyze the situation, and to report our findings at the URSI General Assembly in New Delhi, October 2005. The Questionnaire was collected by August 1 and is now under the analysis

Software for the Support of Learning and Teaching in Electromagnetics

Abstract The study of Electromagnetics is required in most electrical engineering graduate and undergraduate curricula. Traditional methods for teaching Electromagnetics are abstract, theoretical and filled with large number of mathematical equations. Thus, they are not anymore appropriate. The solution is to provide to both professors and students an interactive software with a simplified graphical interface to best teach and learn fundamentals of Electromagnetism. Interactive resources have demonstrated that they were attractive and encouraged the students to be active and autonomous. The aim of this work is to present such interactive software. This software introduces the students to fundamentals of Electromagnetics and provides them with better ways to understand complicated concepts. It uses the calculation functions of Matlab, combined with the powerful graphical user interfaces of Java