SENIORDESIGN
The Mechanical Engineering Program at Virginia Tech graduates more than 400 students each year . A hallmark of this undergraduate experience is the two-semester long Capstone Senior Design course . To accommodate the number of students enrolled , this project-based course is comprised of 50 unique teams , most with between five and eight students , except for larger competition teams .
The cycle for projects is broken into halves . The first semester ( Fall ) is dedicated to learning basic product design , including the following areas : documenting customer needs , generating design specifications , concept generation and down selection , identifying engineering standards , assessing risk and creating mitigation plans , understanding engineering ethics , and writing verification plans . The second semester ( Spring ) is dedicated to building and testing the product design . This building phase leads up to the mid-spring product launch ; at this time , it is expected that devices will be fully functional . From that point , the remainder of the spring is spent on refinement , evaluation , redesign , and verification . At the end of April , sponsors and the general public are invited to the Senior Design Expo , a trade-show-like event where each team displays and explains their projects to visitors , judges , and fellow students .
Of the 50 teams , projects types are divided between four categories : humanitarian , faculty-sponsored , competition , and industrysponsored .
HUMANITARIAN
Just as Virginia Tech is dedicated to its motto of Ut Prosim , “ That I may serve ,” engineering projects are also assembled for this purpose . Humanitarian efforts include an effort to design a manual water pump for a village in Malawi , Africa .
FACULTY-SPONSORED
With more than 40 research centers and labs in the department , many projects are already in motion . Some of these require a team of specialists coming together on a specific component , and some require extensive testing . When faculty sponsor a project , students make a valuable contribution to ongoing research at the university .
COMPETITION
Student teams come together to design , build , and compete with a number of vehicle types . The most common car teams include Formula SAE , Baja SAE , and EcoCar . Most of these teams are ongoing and build on the experiences of past years , continuously improving on design and competing against other schools .
INDUSTRY-SPONSORED
Industry-sponsored projects help both the student and the companies who provide sponsorship . Students gain problem-solving skills from the experiential learning taking place in a real-world , industry context . Industry sponsors benefit from a dedicated team of students who design and implement solutions to projects ; they also get a first-hand look at the new engineers coming to work for them — or their competitors .
14 EDUCATION • VIRGINIA TECH MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ANNUAL REPORT • 2019-2020