Columbia University Senior Design

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Welcome to the Mechanical Engineering's Capstone Design website!

Check this site for 2009 projects as well as past projects.

A number of teams are working on energy issues: Solar Somethings, The SeeSawers, The Parkies and The Wind Turbine Team - the first team specifically for third world countries and the second and third, to satisfy a mayoral directive for .green. projects to the Parks and Recreation Department. The Parks Department projects and the wind turbine address urban energy issues. Two teams are working on projects for third world countries: one to produce electrical power from solar energy and another to help a company produce a low-cost bicycle from locally grown bamboo. The bamboo work also involves working on the manufacturing process rather than the product. One team is working on a UAV: Team Coanda. Two teams did substantial CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis for their design: the UAV team and urban wind turbine. Additionally, the UAV employs a unique airframe design for aerodynamic efficiency and the lightweight structure required for flight involved solving structural problems.

Many projects involve mechanism design and microcomputer control. The UAV is a significant control problem with multiple sensor measurement, advanced control techniques and sensor fusion problems. The autonomous cart, card dealer mechanism, handicap painter and the 3D mouse are also control problems but with the added issue of being closer to commercial product. Each of these employ different feedback mechanisms. The autonomous cart is doing robotic tracking control and obstacle avoidance. The card dealer is doing velocity control in a system that is constrained by friction. The handicap painter does laser tracking and has to overcome the limitations of its intended user. The 3D mouse does haptic feedback in a virtual computer environment. The Bicycle CVT is a difficult machine design / CAD (Computer Aided Design) problem, namely, trying to fit the transmission components within a standard bicycle frame. It also has the highest part count and uses many different manufacturing techniques for fabrication.

In many projects, the students are using their engineering talents to investigate systems to help the environment or those less fortunate than themselves. Others address the problems involved with developing a product or manufacturing process for commercial use.

The addition of the Fryer CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines two years ago and the laser cutter this year has led to a high use of CAD/CAM (Computer Aided Design / Computer Aided Manufacturing) for the projects. In addition, many parts were made on a rapid prototyping machine All the teams have at least one CAM part and many have multiple parts. All teams performed at least one engineering analysis for their design and many performed multiple analyses.