Electrical circuits to mimic respiratory diseases: an interdisciplinary bachelor project

This paper introduces a multidisciplinary project that is given in the last year of bachelor studies in civil engineering at Ghent University, Belgium. In this project, concepts learned during the first three years of study (bachelor program) are applied on a real system. Electrical circuits are build to mimic changes occurring at specific locations in the respiratory tree. The hypothesis tested using this cross-disciplinary project was that if a link exist to a real functionality provide a better understanding and leads to better outcomes in terms of learning process. In this project the students need to build an analogy between the lung airways properties and use equivalence to electrical circuits to evaluate and mimic changes from disease. During this project the students learned to work in a team and to allocate tasks among the team members. Another important competence that they have gained is time management. They have also developed skills for poster design and presentation, developed a critical thinking. All these have lead to a successful implementation of the project and they were able to critically asses changes to mimic diseases.