Journal of Engineering Education Transformations

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Fluid mechanics and Heat transfer are important application oriented courses taught for Mechanical engineering arena and also allied courses like Automobile Engineering, Aero-space and Chemical Engineering. The pedagogy for thermal engineering courses have undergone paradigm shift over the years through novel ways of industry participation, discussion of applications-driven issues, facilitate problem-solving skills, perform analysis/design of thermal systems and use of computational tools. The thermal course material is upgraded pertinant with new technology issues as part of the proposed pedagogical initiatives.

In this direction two lab courses of Fluid mechanics and Heat transfer were identified and revamped for enhanced learning of thermal concepts in the backdrop of student aversion towards these courses. The implementation of course delivery based on the Blooms taxanomy has improved the modus-operandi of delivery of these Lab courses. The categorization of the experiements as Demonstration, Exercise, Structured enquiry and open-ended enquiry has given ample opportunity for faculty to address the ABET 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d, 3e, 3g and 3k criterion to a greater extent.

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The world currently is reeling under acute shortage in essential resources for human existence due to growing population and elevated living standards. Today society at large demands more contributions from engineering community in terms of devising better and cost effective solutions to address existing problems. The engineering practice hence demands better skill sets that are honed to meet present day societal expectations. This situation demands improved teaching-learning methods that prepares engineering graduates to operate in multidisciplinary teams to accomplish the targeted solution or goal.

The present work showcases implementation of effective pedagogical approach in Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) laboratory course prescribed for interdisciplinary PG Programme in Energy Systems Engineering. The course intends to enable students in usage of computational tools that includes commercial and open source software packages for fluid flow analysis. The CFDcourse has application in diverse engineering domains as a precursor for selection and optimization of functional elements in products that involve fluid flows.The course delivery posed several challenges due to diversity within student group and need of mathematical proficiency. The exercises designed in CFD lab-course related to execution of complete cycle of analysis taking into account formulation and solution of fluid flow and heat transfer aspects. The course thereby related to attainment of Programme outcomes (POs) covering areas of Research capabilities, Competence on use of modern computational tools, Multi-disciplinary team activity and communication aspects.

The results obtained provide useful inputs to develop measures that will improve the delivery of the course for next batch of students opting the course.

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Use of simulation software packages based on numerical techniques has been relatively cheaper, faster and normally more ethical than conduct of realtime experiments. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) that basically evolved through application of numerical techniques to physical laws of conservation of mass, momentum and energy. CFD has revolutionized solution to fluid flow, heat transfer, mass transfer and other multidisciplinary problems. CFD requires a strong mathematical base with the thorough understanding of physics behind the problems. The present work deals with delivery and assessment of CFD concepts through the theory and laboratory courses for students of Graduate Program inE nergy Systems Engineering.

The delivery and assessment of the CFD courses targeted the attainment of the Graduate Attributes (GA) PO2, PO4, PO5 and PO6 prescribed for the graduate programme.

The results of pedagogical initiatives in teaching this course to heterogeneous student group imposed few challenges in delivery due to only 37.5% of the group being familiar to the course prerequisites while 62.5% of the group was alien to these concepts. The results indicated that meticulous planning and execution of the courses to the diverse group resulted in the overall average score of 61.4% and 82.04% in theory and lab course respectively.

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Engineering education in unison with societal needs forms the bedrock to developmental activities and progress of human race. The transient nature of real world demands innovative solutions that makes it imperative for continuous knowledge exploration in science and technology. Engineering curriculum must sensitize graduates to be inquisitive to evolve solutions through application of their domain knowledge and exploration of new frontiers. Engineering research involves a systematic investigative approach to enhance the knowledge domain directed towards solution of existing problems. The research at graduate schools can be categorized as Basic research and Applied research depending on whether it establishes the "proof of concept" or delivers new processes, products or techniques. Government of India has initiated several measures for import substitution and indigenous technology development through financial assistance to research activities at academic institutions and industry. The graduate programme in Energy Systems Engineering with focus on renewable energy conversion has taken initiatives to imbibe research component into its curriculum.

The theory courses in the programme have adopted a component that gives an exposure to the research trends in the respective areas through review of research articles. The project work course during the second year of the programme was meticulously designed to provide a mechanism that generated interest to pursue research activities. The periodic assessment through well-defined rubrics to incorporate the good mix of experimentation and computation segments helped in better execution of the project work. The strategy encouraged use of open source hardware tools like Raspberry Pi and Arduino along with software tools like Scilab and Open-foam in the project courses. This work summarizes instillation of research component for attainment of the Graduate Attributes PO4, PO5, PO6 and PO8 through execution of project work at different levels of the Programme. The results have shown that experiential learning strategy in project work has brought a positive change in the learning styles of students indicating their enthusiastic contributions.

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