Harun Chowdhury

Engineering education in Bangladesh – an indicator of economic development

Developing nations including Bangladesh are significantly lagging behind the millennium development target due to the lack of science, technology and engineering education. Bangladesh as a least developing country has only 44 engineers per million people. Its technological education and gross domestic product growth are not collinear. Although limited progress was made in humanities, basic sciences, agriculture and medical sciences, a vast gap is left in technical and engineering education. This paper describes the present condition of engineering education in the country and explores ways to improve engineering education in order to meet the national as well as global skills demand.

An experimental investigation on the aerodynamic drag coefficient and surface roughness properties of sport textiles

The main objective of this study is to determine the effect of surface roughness of textiles used in higher speed sports on aerodynamic properties such as drag. Data acquired using cylindrical methodology is used to quantify the relationship between the aerodynamic drag coefficient and Reynolds numbers (Re) ranging from 1.0 × 105 to 2.4 × 105 for different sports textiles with relative roughness (ϵ) between 2.58 × 104 and 7.38 × 104. The findings indicate that a textile with high roughness value (ϵ = 5.42 × 104) produces minimum drag coefficient at low Re than textiles with low roughness value (ϵ = 4.73 × 104). Correlations among the minimum drag coefficient, critical Reynolds numbers and relative roughness of textile surfaces are also established.

Engineering education in 21st century

The internationalization of engineering curricula and engineering practices has begun in Europe, Anglosphere (English speaking) nations and Asian emerging economies through the Bologna Process and International Engineering Alliance (Washington Accord). Both the Bologna Process and the Washington Accord have introduced standardized outcome based engineering competencies and frameworks for the attainment of these competencies by restructuring existing and undertaking some new measures for an intelligent adaptation of the engineering curriculum and pedagogy. Thus graduates with such standardized outcome based curriculum can move freely as professional engineers with mutual recognition within member nations. Despite having similar or near similar curriculum, Bangladeshi engineering graduates currently cannot get mutual recognition in nations of Washington Accord and the Bologna Process due to the non-compliance of outcome based curriculum and pedagogy. This paper emphasizes the steps that are required to unde...

Aerodynamics of ski jumping suits

The primary purpose of this study is to understand the aerodynamic behaviour of textile fabrics used in ski jumping suits. Macro-scale (cylinder) and full-scale aerodynamic investigations of ski jumping suits and fabrics were undertaken. The aerodynamic effects of surface morphology of ski jumping fabrics were measured. On the basis of the macro-scale investigation, two full-scale ski jumping suits were developed and tested. The results from the macro-scale investigation show that the surface morphology affects the aerodynamic parameters (drag, lift and lift-to-drag ratio). The modified suit based on cylindrical test data shows 2.2% gain in lift-to-drag ratio, which can result in a difference in jump length of up to 4.44 m. The results also indicate that these effects can be utilised in ski jumping suit development to gain aerodynamic advantages. The analysed data from the full-scale investigation confirms the gain obtained from the macro-scale testing.