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For the Mechanical Engineering Senior Design course, teams of students work with a client to create a prototype or product over the course of the academic year. My team consisted of 8 individuals and we worked for the Design Center Colorado to design, manufacture, commission, and test a draw-through wind tunnel for use by CU students.
This was by far my most involved and largest engineering project to date and represents my involvement in project management, ideation, CAD, manufacturing, and professional communication.
Project Manager, Design Lead, CAD Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer
Project Management
As the PM for our team, it was my responsibility to oversee all aspects of the project from timeline and planning to execution of tasks and meeting deliverable requirements. Part of this process meant fostering a healthy team dynamic and working environment as well as navigating interpersonal conflicts. I also served as the primary contact with our client, stakeholders, and vendors.
Design Overview
Our final product is a 23-foot-long draw-through wind tunnel. It contains over 1000 components, required over 1200 hours of in-house manufacturing, and came in at a final budget of $38,000.
The tunnel is designed to the requirements of the CU Boulder Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC) team but is made available for all undergraduate engineering use for classes, labs, clubs, and teams
Design for Manufacturability
This inlet design utilizes an optimized 5th-order polynomial shape from aerospace research, however, the complicated curvature is difficult to manufacture. After exploring various expensive options for manufacturing the pure shape, I developed a ribbed structure that would allow each piece to be cut out of a flat sheet of aluminum and welded to create the contour. A much thinner sheet could then be formed to the ribs and tacked in place.
Robust Design Choices
Unlike many Senior Design projects, our outcome was a final product, not a prototype. This meant that our work would have to stand the test of time and the quality of our product was to be held to higher expectations. This led to decisions including material choice, design considerations, and assembly and operations guides. Each assembly is made of replaceable panels with detailed instructions for manufacturing and assembly required, and the materials were chosen to stand the test of time.
System Testing
Our product is a piece of testing equipment, so it is important that the product performs as expected and can be used for its intended purpose. We designed and performed many tests to ensure not only the reliability of the wind tunnel and included sensors, but our designs and manufacturing quality as well.
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