A pair of third-year civil engineering students recently found out the old adage about keeping things simple really does pay off.
Curtis Watson and Dean Rice took first place honours for the rudimentary but extremely sturdy bridge they built for the Municipal Engineers Association’s bridge-building competition held at Caesars last week.
Last year set a record for wind-energy installations in Canada and the US at an enormous: an average 100 MW terrestrial wind farm requires a $250-million investment. Wind farm owners are naturally keen to ensure that their machines operate efficiently, and that’s where Rupp Carriveau comes in.
An environmental education can give you the knowledge to:
The components for the first of two new wind tunnels to be installed in the new Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation began arriving late last week, much to the delight of the researchers who will be working with them.
Made by Industrial Metal Fabricators Ltd. of Chatham, the elevated 12 meter tunnel will run in a closed loop around the walls of a lab in the north-east corner of the CEI. With a 1.2 meter fan and a 30 horsepower motor, the tunnel will be capable of generating wind speeds of up to about 30 meters per second.
Having a massive piece of equipment used to test the strength of a wide variety of structures moved to the new Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation will give faculty and student researchers a new level of capability they were never able to enjoy in their old facility, according to one engineering professor.
Learning by practice is always the best, says civil engineering professor Amr ElRagaby.
That’s what makes a contest to design and build a bridge from popsicle sticks a valuable experience for his students.
“They can understand the principles, but when the have a chance to apply the theories, they learn something they will never forget,” he said Wednesday, as members of his class in Finite Element for Analysis and Design tested the load-bearing capacity of their structures.
These bridges are designed to fail, but it’s all in the interest of education.
Civil engineering students who have been working to build model bridges invite the campus community to watch as their projects are tested and evaluated, Wednesday in the CAW Student Centre Commons.
Who knew that windmills are territorial? According to an article published online this week by the Ontario Council on University Research, UWindsor researcher Rupp Carriveau did—and his work can turn that knowledge into better wind farms.
Placed too close together, turbines interfere with one another, reducing their overall efficiency, but Dr. Carriveau, an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, is working to determine how strategic placement can exploit the windmills’ wakes to increase power generation.
An artistic streak and a keen awareness of the importance of making complex information understandable translated into a first place province-wide video contest finish this week for an engineering student and amateur filmmaker.
“It was something creative,” Brian Cheung said of making the video that explains the operation of an underwater compressed air energy storage system he works on as a master’s student in civil and environmental engineering. “It was a nice break from research and calculations.”
Rupp Carriveau feels like a torchbearer for UWindsor’s research community.
“We have so many people doing such incredible things and that’s what really makes me proud,” said Dr. Carriveau. An associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, he’s participating in a province-wide awareness campaign aimed at convincing the general public about the importance of university research.
