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Introduction to Engineering is the first engineering course American University in Cairo students take upon admission to the engineering program. It is required of students in all disciplines of engineering. It is a one-credit-hour course that covers topics including history of engineering, engineering fields of specializations, the engineering profession, engineering communications, engineering ethics, and societal obligations. Community-based learning (CBL) was introduced into the course via the required course project. The project was to design toys for children at a school in a disadvantaged squatter community in Old Cairo, Egypt, where infrastructure is poor and education and social mobility can be very limited. The project was carried out in partnership with a non-governmental organization based in Old Cairo. This paper shows how the introductory engineering course was redesigned to integrate CBL while meeting the stated ABET course outcomes. Included are detailed instructions on the tools and structure of the project to provide an example for others wishing to adapt some of these tools to other courses. The paper presents the outcome assessments and survey results to evaluate the project's success at meeting the stated outcomes and includes a discussion on the benefits to the students and the community partner.

Students from Princeton University partnered with students from the American University in Cairo in a three-week intensive hands-on field experience in Egypt. The project was to assemble, install, and test a wind mill-driven pump used for irrigation and to survey communities across Egypt in the Delta and Red Sea coast to assess water needs in these communities. The course offered a perspective on sustainable development in Egypt followed by water and energy resource challenges in Egypt's diverse geographic areas. Students assembled a wind pump and installed it at the American University in Cairo for testing prior to installation at El Heiz, a desert oasis community in the Western Desert. The students were selected from diverse backgrounds in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Operations Research and Financial Engineering, and learned the value of having diverse teams address engineering problems in a truly global context. This paper presents the case study including lessons learned in implementation of this experiential learning field project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction to Engineering is the first engineering course American University in Cairo students take upon admission to the engineering program. It is required of students in all disciplines of engineering. It is a one-credit-hour course that covers topics including history of engineering, engineering fields of specializations, the engineering profession, engineering communications, engineering ethics, and societal obligations. Community-based learning (CBL) was introduced into the course via the required course project. The project was to design toys for children at a school in a disadvantaged squatter community in Old Cairo, Egypt, where infrastructure is poor and education and social mobility can be very limited. The project was carried out in partnership with a non-governmental organization based in Old Cairo. This paper shows how the introductory engineering course was redesigned to integrate CBL while meeting the stated ABET course outcomes. Included are detailed instructions on the tools and structure of the project to provide an example for others wishing to adapt some of these tools to other courses. The paper presents the outcome assessments and survey results to evaluate the project’s success at meeting the stated outcomes and includes a discussion on the benefits to the students and the community partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental study has been performed in a transonic annular sector cascade of nozzle guide vanes (NGVs) to investigate the aerodynamic performance and the interaction between hub film cooling and mainstream flow. The focus of the study is on the endwalls, specifically the interaction between the hub film cooling and the mainstream. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has been supplied to the coolant holes to serve as tracer gas. Measurements of CO2 concentration downstream of the vane trailing edge (TE) can be used to visualize the mixing of the coolant flow with the mainstream. Flow field measurements are performed in the downstream plane with a five-hole probe to characterize the aerodynamics in the vane. Results are presented for the fully cooled and partially cooled vane (only hub cooling) configurations. Data presented at the downstream plane include concentration contour, axial vorticity, velocity vectors, and yaw and pitch angles. From these investigations, secondary flow structures such as the horseshoe vortex, passage vortex, can be identified and show the cooling flow significantly impacts the secondary flow and downstream flow field. The results suggest that there is a region on the pressure side (PS) of the vane TE where the coolant concentrations are very low suggesting that the cooling air introduced at the platform upstream of the leading edge (LE) does not reach the PS endwall, potentially creating a local hotspot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large-scale model of an inclined row of film cooling holes is used to obtain detailed sur-face and flow field measurements that will enable future computational fluid dynamics code development and validation. The model consists of three holes of 1.9-cm diameter that are spaced three hole diameters apart and inclined 30 deg from the surface. The length to di-ameter ratio of the coolant holes is about 18. Measurements include film effectiveness using IR thermography and near wall thermocouples, heat transfer using liquid crystal thermog-raphy, flow field temperatures using a thermocouple, and velocity and turbulence quantities using hotwire anemometry. Results are obtained for blowing ratios of up to 2 in order to capture severe conditions in which the jet is lifted. For purposes of comparison with prior art, measurements of the velocity and turbulence field along the jet centerline are made and compare favorably with two data sets in the open literature thereby verifying the test apparatus and methodology are able to replicate existing data sets. In addition, a computa-tional fluid dynamics model using a two-equation turbulence model is developed, and the results for velocity, turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent dissipation rate are compared with experimentally derived quantities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High inlet temperatures in a gas turbine lead to an increase in the thermal efficiency of the gas turbine. This results in the requirement of cooling of gas turbine blades/vanes. In-ternal cooling of the gas turbine blade/vanes with the help of two-pass channels is one of the effective methods to reduce the metal temperatures. In particular, the trailing edge of a turbine vane is a critical area, where effective cooling is required. The trailing edge can be modeled as a trapezoidal channel. This paper describes the numerical validation of the heat transfer and pressure drop in a trapezoidal channel with and without orthogo-nal ribs at the bottom surface. A new concept of ribbed trailing edge has been introduced in this paper which presents a numerical study of several trailing edge cooling configura-tions based on the placement of ribs at different walls. The baseline geometries are two-pass trapezoidal channels with and without orthogonal ribs at the bottom suiface of the channel. Ribs induce secondary flow which results in enhancement of heat transfer; therefore, for enhancement of heat transfer at the trailing edge, ribs are placed at the trailing edge surface in three different configurations: first without ribs at the bottom sur-face, then ribs at the trailing edge surface in-line with the ribs at the bottom surface, and finally staggered ribs. Heat transfer and pressure drop is calculated at Reynolds number equal to 9400 for all configurations. Different turbulent models are used for the valida-tion of the numerical results. For the smooth channel low-Re k-i: model, realizable k-e model, the RNG k-a> model, low-Re k-a> model, and SST k-a> models are compared, whereas for ribbed channel, low-Re k-e model and SST k-co models are compared. The results show that the low-Re k-E model, which predicts the heat transfer in outlet pass of the smooth channels with difference of+7%, underpredicts the heat transfer by --17% in case of ribbed channel compared to experimental data. Using the same turbulence model shows that the height of ribs used in the study is not suitable for inducing secondary flow. Also, the orthogonal rib does not strengthen the secondary flow rotational momentum. The comparison between the new designs for trailing edge shows that if pressure drop is acceptable, staggered arrangement is suitable for the outlet pass heat transfer. For the trailing edge wall, the thermal performance for the ribbed trailing edge only was found about 8% better than other configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detailed film effectiveness measurements have been made on a cylindrical leading edge surface for steady and pulsating flows. The film hole is off centered by 21.5 deg from the centerline and angled 20 deg to the surface and 90 deg from the streamwise direction. Two jet-to-cross-flow velocity ratios have been considered: VR = 1 and 2, which correspond to blowing ratios of 1 and 2, respectively. The pulsating frequency is 10 Hz and the duty cycle is 50%. Comparisons between film effectiveness with a pulsating film and a continuous film show that for the same blowing ratio, the effectiveness of the film drops by a factor of 2 when the flow is pulsed. Hotwire measurements are made to characterize the pulsating velocity waveform at the exit of the film exit and verify the integrity of the pulse. The variation in the measured surface adiabatic wall temperature over the pulsing duration is very small, suggesting a large thermal inertia that keeps the wall surface largely unaffected by the time scale of the pulsations; this holds true for both blowing ratios tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A small-scale concentrated solar power (CSP) unit was designed to provide electricity and hot water using an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) for Egypt as part of an undergraduate capstone project. The system was designed for a target power output of 3 kW. It uses parabolic troughs to heat ethylene glycol used as the heat transfer fluid, which absorbs heat in the trough collector and transfers it to the working fluid through a heat exchanger. The system consists of 9 parabolic troughs and a total aperture area of 67 m2, providing the required 3 kW of energy to the ORC. One parabolic trough was manufactured to test its thermal efficiency according to ASHRAE standard 93-2003 [Methods of Testing to Determine the Thermal Performance of Solar Collectors (ASHRAE, Inc., 1791 Tullie Circle, NE, Atlanta, GA 30329, 2003)] and compared it to its calculated value. A simple microcontroller-based system was used to track the sun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The necessity of performing an unsteady simulation for the purpose of predicting the heat transfer on the endwall surfaces of a turbine passage is addressed. This is measured by the difference between the two solutions obtained from a steady simulation and the time average of an unsteady simulation. The heat transfer coefficient (Nusselt number) based on the adiabatic wall temperature is used as the basis of the comparison. As there is no film cooling in the proposed case, a computed heat transfer coefficient should be a better measure of such difference than, say, a wall heat flux. Results show that the effect of unsteadiness due to wake passage on the pressures and recovery temperatures on both hub and casing is negligible. Heat transfer on the endwalls, however, is affected by the unsteady wake; the time-averaged results yield higher heat transfer; in some regions, up to 15% higher. The results for the endwall heat transfer were compared with results in open literature and were found to be comparable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study which utilized Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques to analyze film cooling at high blowing ratios. The study also compared the numerical predictions with experimental data to identify the shortcomings of such techniques in predicting film-cooling flows. It examined the ability of CFD to predict high-blowing-ratio, low-blowing-ratio and intermediate blowing ratio. Study authors concluded that the wake of jet poses challenge for RANS-based CFD techniques.

Computational fluid dynamics models are used to predict the heat transfer distribution on a smooth surface under an array of angled impinging jets. The three-dimensional numerical models simulate impingement with cross flow in one direction. Jet angle is varied between 30°, 60°, and 90° as measured from the smooth flat impingement surface. Conjugate conduction in the heated boundary is included in the analysis. Two turbulence models are examined, the standard k–e model and the Yang-Shih model. Local and average heat transfer coefficients are compared with test data for 30 test cases. The Yang-Shih model was able to predict average Nusselt number within 2–30%. The standard k–e model predicts average Nusselt number with 0 to nearly 60% error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]