Interdisciplinary Capstone Design at the University of Houston

Abstract

In 1998 the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Houston began requiring the completion of a capstone design course as part of its BSEE and BSCE degrees. Through mutual agreement they created a new course number ECE 4334 and joined the existing INDE/MECE 4334 capstone design course, required of all students in the Departments and Industrial Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. This paper describes the changes that have occurred in the new combined course ECE/INDE/MECE 4334, the interdisciplinary capstone course for three departments and provides a description of projects from spring, 2002. Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) is a system that grows semiconductor crystals on a substrate. The Texas Center for Superconductivity and Advanced Materials has a MBE device in need of a modern control system. The effusion cells on this system are controlled by a legacy computer system that is difficult to use and is deficient of most automation capabilities required for more complex growth routines. A control system using labVIEW has been developed with scripting capability for the three components of the effusion cell: shutter, heating power supply, and thermocouple. To successfully operate a medical Magnetic Resonance Imager, accurate measurements of patient dimensions are required to reference and calibrate the image to the patient’s actual anatomical scale. Current methods for the measurement of external patient dimensions are relatively inaccurate and slow. A device has been designed and fabricated which will take linear patient dimensions and transfer those readings to a Windows PC via the serial input/output port. Major modifications to existing measurement devices include a flexible synthetic tape material, circumferential measurement hook assembly, and the electronic data acquisition hardware and data transfer circuitry. on-site capacitor for the current and future that added during the plant careful no to purchase additional capacitor for The objective was to design an exercise device for use in microgravity. High impact exercise is necessary to maintain motor skills and skeletal structure in a microgravitational environment. The current exercise device used on the International Space Station does not meet several important requirements and is unreliable. A design and feasibility study is presented for five devices. In addition, a full size prototype of a circular running device was constructed to test the feasibility of running on a disc. to calculate the plastic deformation on a set of “no-go” shoulders in a flow control system called a Sur-set valve. A Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was done to determine the plastic deformation of these shoulders. Compression testing was done to validate the FEA.