A BLUEPRINT FOR IMPLEMENTING GRAND CHALLENGE SCHOLARS’ PROGRAMME: A CASE STUDY OF TAYLOR’S UNIVERSITY

The National Academy for Engineering announced 14 Grand Challenges for the 21st Century engineers to address in order to ensure a sustainable future for the generations to come. These grand challenges are in four broad areas, namely, energy and environment, health, security and learning and computation. This paper reports on a Grand Challenges Scholars’ Programme that is developed to prepare the engineering students to be able to address the grand challenges using the CDIO framework and focusing on five components; research experience, interdisciplinary curriculum, entrepreneurship, global dimension and service learning. The programme is voluntary and the candidates are expected to commit additional learning time. The programme was launched with 16 participants who are expected to graduate in 2016. A preliminary assessment of the programs shows that the participants found the programme useful in developing an array of CDIO skills. The School intends to continue offering this programme with the intention of integrating it with a holistic education approach

Analysis of a Hybrid Mechanical Regenerative Braking System

Regenerative braking systems for conventional vehicles are gaining attention as fossil fuels continue to be depleted. The major forms of regenerative braking systems include electrical and mechanical systems, with the former being more widely adopted at present. However mechanical systems are still feasible, including the possible hybrid systems of two mechanical energy recovery systems. A literature study was made to compare the various mechanical energy recovery systems. These systems were compared based on their advantages and disadvantages with regards to energy storage, usage, and maintenance. Based on the comparison, the most promising concept appeared to be one that combined the flywheel and the pneumatic energy recovery systems. A CAD model of this hybrid system was produced to better visualise the design. This was followed by analytical modelling of the energy recovery systems. The analysis indicated that the angular velocity had an extremely significant impact on the power loss and energy efficiency. The results showed that the hybrid system can provide better efficiency but only when operating within certain parameters. Future work is required to further improve the efficiency of this hybrid system

Analysis of a Hybrid Mechanical Regenerative Braking System

Regenerative braking systems for conventional vehicles are gaining attention as fossil fuels continue to be depleted. The major forms of regenerative braking systems include electrical and mechanical systems, with the former being more widely adopted at present. However mechanical systems are still feasible, including the possible hybrid systems of two mechanical energy recovery systems. A literature study was made to compare the various mechanical energy recovery systems. These systems were compared based on their advantages and disadvantages with regards to energy storage, usage, and maintenance. Based on the comparison, the most promising concept appeared to be one that combined the flywheel and the pneumatic energy recovery systems. A CAD model of this hybrid system was produced to better visualise the design. This was followed by analytical modelling of the energy recovery systems. The analysis indicated that the angular velocity had an extremely significant impact on the power loss and energy efficiency. The results showed that the hybrid system can provide better efficiency but only when operating within certain parameters. Future work is required to further improve the efficiency of this hybrid system

Community Waste Plastic Recycling System Through Plastic Injection Molding

High demand for plastic worldwide has resulted in increasing environmental pollution. To make the plastic manufacturing process more environmentally friendly, recycling of waste plastic must be considered. In view of this a social enterprise called Me.reka Makerspace aims to use waste plastic to produce recycled plastic products using injection molding. However, injection molding is a complex process. In the past Me.reka experienced numerous failures resulting in defective plastic products and cost wastage. To assist with Me.reka’s objective, this study aimed to recommend a process capable of producing good quality recycled plastic products that meet dimensional accuracy and surface roughness requirements. Literature review done on plastic waste separation techniques, plastic properties testing for injection molding, and ventilation systems. Manual plastic sorting was found to be the best for Me.reka, where it can separate all 7 types of plastics collected by Me.reka with the highest accuracy and efficiency and the lowest cost. The melt flow rate of specific plastic type can determine its compatibility for use in the injection molding machine. Furthermore this study found that the best ventilation system for Me.reka Makerspace’s plastic injection molding facility was the displacement ventilation. It is expected that with the installation of an efficient ventilation system, the hazardous gasses produced during the process will be efficiently expelled thus protecting the health of workers. With regards to injection molding, a mold design was made for a book cover mold by applying the applicable mold design principles. However, this mold was later sent for testing at another facility. A flowerpot mold that had arrived at Me.reka which required immediate testing was tested instead. Through testing, improvements were made to the mold and the molding process by finding out the optimum injection molding temperature for the waste plastic used and the mold sprue diameter required to produce a well formed molding

Design and Analysis of a Separator for Aluminium Dust Particle Collection

Cyclone separators are considered one of the most common and widely used method of separating solid particles from fluids. The focus of this paper was to design a separator that could effectively improve the air quality of an industrial working environment by considering factors such as the nature of the particles and the restrictions on the device such as size and operating condition. To do so, a sample of the dust sample was studied to determine the characteristics of the aluminum dust. An initial separator model which satisfied the separation condition was developed, and a second model was developed with the goal of optimizing and reducing the overall size of the separator. All models developed were subjected to CFD simulations to analyze the flow patterns, separation rate at various particle diameters as well as comparing against the theoretical predicted values. The simulation results showed how the change in various parameters improved the separation efficiency. The total height of the model was approximately 20% smaller than the initial proposed design to fit into the manufacturer’s workbench while the separation efficiencies improved by an average of 5% to 10% across various particle sizes. The results obtained indicated that the efficiency of the particle collection is dependent on the area of the barrel inlet of the separator and the depth of the vortex finder