WIE Undergraduates: RISE Scholars Projects
2006 Summer Research Team Projects
Please note that "Daily Activities" are provided as estimates of time commitment and do not include additional RISE program activities.
- Capturing Design Rationale by Observation of Senior Design Teams
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Linda C. Schmidt, Mechanical Engineering - High Altitude Balloon Payload Development and Flight Test Project
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Mary Bowden, Aerospace Engineering
Capturing Design Rationale by Observation of Senior Design Teams
Project Description
Today's engineered products are the latest offerings of a legacy of prior generations of products combined with new technology and skills of many teams of designers applied over a number of years. Most designing tasks begin with a current set of products that no longer fulfill customer needs and a matched set of corporate design memory. The secrets of design innovation in a field spring from living through cycles of design decision making. Transferring this experience to new designers or into new fields of application is what drives innovation within a successful company. Design experience is the understanding of (or at least a clear memory of) the rationale behind choices in the designing process. Products and systems can be dissected and analyzed to discover their component parts. However, the product itself does carry a record of the rationale than shaped it.
The 2005 RISE Scholars team created studied design journals kept by student teams and the literature of cognitive processes necessary for design to take place. The 2005 team suggested a design rationale capture protocol for capstone designs teams. This protocol was piloted on ten teams in the Fall 2005 semester with mixed results. More rationale capture is ongoing in the Spring 2006 semester. The goal of the 2006 Scholars team is to improve on the protocol for design rationale capture. The scholars will review the design repository materials from previous course teams. At the same time, each scholar will be an observer on a capstone design team working during the Summer Session of 2006 in a course taught by Dr. Schmidt.
The goal of this project is to identify critical design rationale capture methods and improve the protocol for rationale capture in a senior capstone mechanical engineering design course.
RISE Scholar Responsibilities and Daily Activities
All RISE Scholars will be expected to perform background reading (10%) to familiarize themselves with mechanical design process decision making and how it is recorded in a course. All Scholars will be trained in techniques for recognizing group decision making in real-time as a silent observer on a team of engineering students (20%). Each Scholar will be assigned to a capstone design team and will observe their group meetings and conduct individual and group interviews as needed to document the design rationale for the project (65%). The Scholars will meet at least once a week to compare team experiences and identify specific activities for ongoing study (5%) All Scholars will compile results for poster presentation and report publication.
High Altitude Balloon Payload Development and Flight Test Project
Project Description
Students need access to space. There are many experiments that could benefit greatly from a flight to the highest reaches of the atmosphere and to the very edge of space. Traditionally, this region has been very difficult to access because of the cost of sounding rockets or orbital vehicles. This project pursues the goal of developing and launching an experimental payload on a weather balloon to an altitude of at least 80,000 feet, obtaining data at that altitude, and tracking and retrieving the payload upon its return to Earth. This is the initial phase in our vision of providing relatively easy and inexpensive access to near-space for students researchers.
The 2006 RISE Team assembled for this project will be given the task of building and flying a payload to accomplish a number of scientific and engineering goals on its flight to near space. The project most likely will involve releasing an aerodynamic vehicle near the top of the flight trajectory, and actively flying it back down to a safe landing spot in order to test its flight characteristics. This vehicle may be an instrumented glider or may be a simulated parashield reentry vehicle. Tests may also be run prior to flight using the neutral buoyancy research facility of the UMD Space Systems Lab.
In addition to building and testing the experimental payload, all RISE scholars will participate in at least one launch of student built payloads early in the summer and will thereby become familiar with the balloon inflation, release, and tracking procedures, so that when their payload is launched toward the end of the summer, they can serve as the primary launch and recovery team. All scholars will also be given the opportunity to obtain a ham radio operator’s license during the summer, since radios are used extensively for tracking and recovering balloon payloads. For more information about the Balloon Payload Program in Maryland, please go to www.nearspace.net/.
RISE Scholar Responsibilities and Daily Activities
All RISE Scholars will be expected to perform background reading (10%) on all that has been done to date on balloon launch vehicles. They will meet on a daily basis in the Balloon Payload Lab and will work together to refine the design objectives, study design alternatives, and arrive at a functional payload design. The group will allocate tasks to each according to their skills and proceed with construction and testing of the payload (60%). As needed, all members of the RISE team will participate in training for launch operations and support at least one other launch of payloads from other schools (20%). Finally, we will have occasional outreach activities (10%). All Scholars will compile results for poster presentation and report publication.
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