ME 410 - Senior Design Projects

The senior design activity at Bradley University is an intense engineering exercise that spans the fall and spring semesters of each mechanical engineering student's senior year. During this course sequence student teams are required to provide an engineering solution to a client's need. The solution should include some component of design and require a commitment of approximately 400 hours per student (12 hours per week per student).

The general schedule of activities related to each cycle of the ME410/ME411 Senior Design course sequence follows. Each cycle begins in the spring semester of the junior year for each group of students. It ends on the final exam day of the second semester of their senior year. This list is not intended to represent all of the activities of the student teams and only represents some of the major course milestones. Student activities will vary from project to project and will be defined by the students in the written project proposal prepared by the student teams.

The General Schedule of activities for ME410/411:

1. Project Solicitation & Development - junior year fall/spring/early summer
2. Student Interest Surveys - April spring semester junior year
3. Final Client & Project Definitions - June-August pre-senior year
4. Team Assignments - summer prior to senior year
5. Final Team Assignments - August summer pre-senior year
6. Project & Team Announcement - 1st day of class senior year
7. Proposals Before - September 31, senior year
8. 1st Oral Presentation (proposal) - before October 31, senior year
9. Written Progress Report Due - end of 1st semester
10. 2nd Oral Presentation (progress report) - before February 28, senior year
11. 3rd Oral Presentation (final report) - before April 31, senior year
12. Written Final Report & Deliverables Due - end of 2nd semester

To accommodate the demands of this approach to senior design activities, the department's faculty must develop 14-15 new projects each year. To accommodate the academic year the clients must be identified and the projects must be defined in advance of the senior year. The process of developing a project is a collaborative effort between Bradley faculty and industry clients. It is aided by the use of a "Pre-Proposal for Senior Design Projects" form. This form asks for a title, a general description of the project, the objectives of the project, an anticipated budget, a point of contact, and a projected list of deliverables. The list of deliverables is a critical component of this project description. Deliverables are tangible items that must be transferred to the client prior to a student's graduation. The students do not see this pre-proposal form. Developing a proposal that satisfies their client's needs is part of their senior design activity.

The senior class is typically divided into teams of three or four students and assigned to a team. Students are assigned to a team on the basis of their interest and their talents. Our goal is to staff each team with adequate student talent to satisfy customer needs. We want our clients to be satisfied enough to request follow-on projects.

The first student activity is to communicate with their client and to gather enough information to write a proposal for the project. The students must include background material, objectives, a technical approach, a budget, a schedule with milestones, and a list of deliverables. This list of deliverables will be used as a checklist at the end of the year as the first requirement for a grade in the course. If the list of deliverables is not entirely completed by the final exam period of the second semester, that team will not graduate. As a result, the client, faculty, and students must sign-off on the proposal before design work can begin.

The students are required to participate in a sequence of reporting activities, both written and oral. At least one of the oral presentations must be performed at the client's site. An exception to this policy is for clients more than 4 hours travel from Bradley University. For these clients, the student teams are required, when possible, to make presentations to their clients via videoconference.

This student activity is intended to simulate the environment an engineer would experience in an industry setting. This usually means a team that is under-staffed, under-funded, and over-worked. We expect each student to deliver about 10-12 hours per week on the senior project. This represents approximately 1200 hours of engineering work per team and includes faculty guidance. The client should also expect to receive all of the proposed deliverables. Default on the list of deliverables will result in a grade of incomplete for the course. The grade of incomplete will remain until all of the deliverables have been transferred. The student's will be pushed hard to successfully compete their projects in this course, again not unlike industry.

Past projects have ranged from paper studies to prototype delivery. Projects have ranged from open-ended topics approaching research to projects that are focused on the specific design of a machine element. Topics have spanned the spectrum of mechanical engineering and have also included aspects of bioengineering, electrical engineering, manufacturing, and cost analysis. In the past two years we have provided solutions to industry clients including Caterpillar, John Deere, Boeing, Visteon, NASA, U.S. Air Force, Walt Disney, OSF St. Francis Hospital, ASHREA, Winzeler Gear, and Copeland.