New Fluid Mechanics Laboratory

Associate professor Zbigniew Kabala has upgraded the fluid mechanics lab to include a multi-purpose teaching flume, a series/parallel pump, cavitation demonstration capabilities and a pitot tube and manometer board that augments an existing Armfield Water Hydraulic bench. The new experimental capabilities of the system directly impact such courses as CE122L Fluid Mechanics, ME122L Fluid Mechanics, BME207 Transport Phenomena in Biological Systems and additional upper division engineering courses. The addition of the pump capabilities extends existing virtual fluid mechanical laboratory exercises that expose students to FlowLab and the CFD software Fluent.

New Hands-on Structural Mechanics Laboratory

Associate Professor of the Practice Joseph Nadeau has upgraded the mechanics lab to expand hands-on laboratory capabilities for a whole range of structural mechanics courses including EGR75L Mechanics of Solids, CE131L Matrix Structural Design and CE134L Metallic Structures.

The upgrade features a new bench-mounted TQ’s Structures Test frame and six experimental modules, including additional hardware and software.

This lab upgrade moves the student experience from simple testing and theoretical work into hands-on exploration of stress, strain, deflections, buckling, bending, and torsion on engineered systems. The experimental system allows students to virtually model a structure and then compare that theory to the actual behavior of the structure under stress.

Rejiggering Environmental Engineering Courses

Faculty are revamping the undergraduate environmental engineering courses to put more emphasis on the practice and application of the discipline and to better integrate chemistry and biology into the curriculum. The team hopes the changes will encourage more students to chose environmental as their career focus.

Faculty piloted a required first year course in 2007, CEE24 Introduction to Environmental Engineering, intended to expose students to the breadth of career opportunities in environmental engineering. The course focuses on a broad range of applied environmental engineering such as global warming, energy issues, indoor air pollution, sensors, disaster recovery and sustainable development. Practicing engineers from industry serve as guest lecturers, and augment the presentation by Duke faculty.

The faculty team has also made adjustments to sophomore and junior level courses ECE 120 and 124. Now students are able to delve more deeply into the science of chemistry and biology within an applied environmental engineering context, and study energy, soil and air treatment technologies.

Senior Design Course Mimics Real World

Senior CEE majors have the opportunity to try their hand at real-world design through a series of integrated capstone courses. All students are required to take either CE 192: Integrated Structural Design from Professor Joseph Nadeau or CE 193: Integrated Environmental Design from Assistant Chair David Schaad. The structural team deals with gravity and the loads of the structure, while the environmental team deals with the land around the structure, with plenty of interaction between the two camps. Students in the courses interact as though they are employees in a virtual design company called Overture Engineering. The courses are also interwoven with CE 162: Architectural Engineering taught by Adjunct Professor Chris Brasier. Quite a few students take both the structural or environmental design course and the architectural engineering course, so they are seeing the project from both an architectural and an engineering perspective.

“We’ve gotten feedback from graduates that the course has helped them lot in job interviews. Some of them have also found, after a year in the field, that they are doing things similar to their capstone design projects is part of their jobs,” said Professor Joseph Nadeau.

Practical Methods in Civil Engineering

In CE100, students learn and perform practical methods of civil engineering, including surveying, computer-aided-design, geographical information systems and the use of mills, lathes, and other machine tools. This required course helps students prepare for careers in engineering by fostering understanding of how to use and apply tools of the civil engineering, and an appreciation of the level of effort associated with supervising personnel who daily employ these skills. The course is lab based, with instruction in a topic immediated followed by the application of the learned design method. Students complete three projects in the course of the semester.