Browsing by Author "Rodriguez, Jorge"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Analysis of Students Open Feedback After Their Participation in a Multinational Design Project
(LACCEI Inc., 2018-09) Rodriguez, Jorge; Nunez Del Prado Cortez, Miguel; Esparragoza, Ivan E.; Alatrista Salas, Hugo
Participation by students in multinational engineering design projects is an activity that has been implemented at academic institutions with the objective of exposing the students to globalization. Such collaborations are becoming a very important practice that prepare students to be aware of the various aspects that are faced whenever work is performed in a global environment. There have been several approaches for the implementation of these activities in the curriculum, and the one presented here is an engineering design project conducted with the participation of students from six different countries. As an assessment of the students’ experience, three specific open-ended questions were asked at the end of their participation. These questions cover the basic information of like-dislike-recommendation regarding the collaborative experience. Proper interpretation of responses to open-ended questions is not an easy task, and several approaches have been reported. In this manuscript, the data analytics technique of topic modelling is utilized in order to get a more objective assessment. Based on the responses by participants to the three basic questions, together with the corresponding demographic information, the feedback is evaluated and some conclusions are drawn regarding the effect of factors like geographic location and gender. These conclusions will be utilized to improve the offering of a multinational collaboration by students in an engineering design project.
Topology optimization for design of a water monitor
(LACCEI Inc., 2018-09) Choudhury, Alamgir; Rodriguez, Jorge
For a given firefighting pump, delivery of maximum amount of water often determines effectiveness of the overall system. In typical commercial water monitor, about 10% of water pressure is lost due to friction in the flow path of water monitor. With proper analysis of the flow system and shape geometry, this pressure loss can be minimized significantly. This would allow fire fighters to pump more water in a shorter period, and in turn, save life and property. A typical commercial water monitors has a diameter of four inches and delivers 2,500 gallons per minute (GPM) of water at 100 psi pressure. In this paper, design analysis of pressure loss and shape optimization of a larger water monitor is presented. The monitor has a diameter of six inches and would deliver 3.000 GPM water at 100 psi pressure. Two path radii define the shape of the water monitor and its size is constrained by a rectangular prism of given dimensions. Based on a pressure loss cost function, a commercially available Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool is used to optimize the geometry of the flow path. Shape of its cross section is optimized by utilizing derivative of the cost function with respect to cross sectional area of the water monitor. Resulting system improved pressure loss by more than 46% compared to circular cross sectional flow path in standard design of a commercial system.