Winning Senior Design Teams
2002-2003
Two teams of ME seniors designed a prosthetic arm for 10-year-old Jaclyn Barker to improve her ability to play violin. Jaclyn was born without the lower part of her right arm. Each team had the same goal: to design a mechanism that would keep the bow perpendicular to the strings during the full range of motion while Jaclyn played her violin.
Six teams of EE seniors acted as competing companies to design and fabricate a diagnostic analyzer for a Multiparameter Bioanalytical System (MBS) marketed by Yellow Springs Instruments (YSI). The students regularly met with engineers from YSI and were required to present their preliminary designs to the customer. Each team built a prototype of their hardware design and developed the associated software. The product selected by YSI was a hand-held, battery-operated, microprocessor-controlled instrument which interfaced to the YSI 7100 MBS and displayed information to the user.
2003-2004
A group of ME seniors designed and built a canard-style radio-controlled airplane for the purpose of reducing its take-off distance. This rear-engine, short-body aircraft style typically has a large lift-to-weight ratio, promoting fuel savings during flight. Its major drawback, however, is the lengthy take-off distance which prevents its use on short runways. The students designed and built a variable-pitch front stabilizer and flaps onto the main wing of their canard. They achieved a 10% reduction in take-off distance and suggested that a similar reduction could be achieved when the canard plane is scaled to full-size.
Brian Montague, a senior ME, designed a unique hull for the 2004 Solar Splash boat. The bulk of the competition points is obtained from performing well in two races: (1) the sprint, which requires high acceleration and top speed for a short distance, and (2) the endurance, which requires low drag at low speeds for a long time. Brian designed the hull to act like a planing hull for the sprint (front-end out of the water) and like a displacement hull for the endurance (back-end out of the water) simply by shifting the boat?s center of gravity. The innovation was instrumental in the victory for the 2004 Solar Splash team, as well as a victory for Brian in the ASME Region V Old Guard Oral competition.
2004-2005
FCSD II, or Oculus was the device designed and built by a team of ME seniors for the express purpose of supporting orthopedic surgeons as they implant artificial hips into their patients. This Femoral Canal Sizing Device was designed to gather accurate information about the inner dimensions of the femur in preparation for a press-fit implant. A team of Computer Science seniors collaborated with the engineering students by developing the software which computed the dimensions from the electronic signals and output a graphical representation of the cavity.
For the third straight year, Yellow Springs Instruments (YSI) supported the EE senior design project. Six competitive "companies" of EE seniors designed and prototyped a Next Generation Instrument which YSI hopes to move to market in the near future. This would be a low-cost and user-friendly bioanalyzer with interface similar to that of current models (see graphic). The EE seniors obtain valuable experience working with customers, budgets, and time contraints.
