Sustainability-Focused Project-Based Learning in a Heat Transfer Course

Climate change is one of the most notable societal challenges that is being pursued in the field of Mechanical Engineering.As a result, sustainability-focused design is becoming more prevalent in industry, and the same is true of Mechanical Engineering curricula.In this paper, four projects that were assigned to undergraduate Mechanical Engineering students in their Heat Transfer course will be presented and examples of student design solutions will be discussed.To ensure an authentic engineering experience, the design projects were defined based on the immediate needs of the Macoskey Center (MC) for Sustainability Education and Research at Slippery Rock University.The director of the MC acted as the customer in the engineering design process, and she was responsible for defining the project scope and requirements.All projects had to use only sustainable processes and materials during the design process.Additionally, two design concepts were required -one with the goal of optimizing cost and the other optimizing performance.The educational goals included mathematical discussion of the mechanisms of heat transfer, design generation and selection using sustainable processes and materials, collaborating effectively in an engineering team, and technical discussion of the designs.Students were required to generate two concepts, one that prioritized performance, and another that prioritized cost and ease of implementation.Students presented their work in a written report as part of their overall summative assessment and through an oral presentation to the MC director.Overall, student project learning outcomes were achieved, and observations were noted that influenced course improvements.This work will be expanded in the future to assess educational outcomes and student perceptions of the projects, as well as extend the projects to a Capstone Design course.