Varghese Panthalookaran

“Hour of Creativity”: An agenda to foster creativity and innovation in the students of engineering

Creativity and innovation are prerequisites of a successful engineering career. It equips an engineer to contribute to the sustainable technical development of the contemporary world with globalized challenges. Hence, it is imperative to train the students of engineering in engineering creativity and technical innovation. However, the constraints of a conventional curriculum, which lay excessive emphasis on formal instruction, often leave little room for training in engineering creativity. Additionally, the time pressure exerted by the conventional curriculum on students, adversely affects the learning environment and the ecosystem suitable for creativity and innovation. The concept of “Hour of Creativity” developed at Rajagiri School of Engineering & Technology is meant to overcome these hurdles. An hour per week is chalked out from the academic schedule of the students, exclusively for creative and critical thinking and to foster discovery and innovation. The events and programs of the “Hour of Creativity” are so designed that they directly contribute to nurturing creative mind and innovative spirit of the students. In order to render additional motivation to the students, the “Hour of Creativity” is coupled with research mentoring of the students to identify, develop and evaluate the concepts of their own Undergraduate Projects, an academic requirement for Bachelor degree in Technology.

On Design of a Buoyancy-Driven Solar Combi-System for Simultaneous Production of Drinking Water and Hot Water

The nexus between availability of solar energy and nonavailability of drinking water is well known. Drinking water scarcity is prevalent in regions where sun shines heavily, which provides an ideal condition for exploiting available solar insolation to produce potable water. When combined with the production of hot water, it could lead to the optimum use of solar energy. The same system can be preferentially used to produce drinking water during hot and dry summer and hot water in cold and wet winter. The current paper describes a work in progress to design a solar combi-system that meets the drinking water and hot water needs of small households in coastal India. The solar distillation operates based on an open humidification-dehumidification cycle. Efficient solar combi-collectors are used to produce hot and dry air and hot water simultaneously. The hot air blasts into the evaporation chamber, which consists of structures to optimize evaporation of the hot water. This allows enhanced humidification of dry air. The condensation chamber efficiently dehumidifies or condenses the saturated air to yield distilled water. The water thus produced is made potable with proper mineralization. A hot water heat store preserves hot water to be fed into the evaporator as well as to the hot water pipeline. The combi-system planned for a small household with approximately 10 liters of drinking water requirement per day and proportionate hot water requirement. The complete system is designed to be driven entirely by the buoyancy forces, without any moving parts.Copyright

A Model to Facilitate Undergraduate Engineering Research

In order to be able to innovate sustainable solutions to critical engineering problems, a modern engineer needs to be adequately equipped with sufficient creativeness and a research attitude. The focus of existing undergraduate engineering curricula is however, often limited to the development of sound knowledge of the engineering fundamentals, forgoing the need for nurturing creativity and research skills in the students. The current paper presents a model for systematic facilitation of undergraduate research, while remaining within the constraints of a prescribed curriculum. The model endeavors to strike a balance between the concerns of engineering education and engineering research. The students are encouraged to get in touch with the current innovations in the frontier areas of their respective engineering fields and are promoted to develop their undergraduate projects in constant interaction and under continuous mentoring of a faculty research group. They are thus equipped to contribute creatively to the area of their study right from the beginning of their engineering career, which would instill in them enough confidence to engage with contemporary engineering challenges.Copyright

Some Models and Methods to Nurture General Management Skills in Engineering Students Living in Large Residential Communities

To be successful in one’s profession, an engineer operating in the contemporary globalized world needs to be adequately equipped with suitable management skills. They include talent to plan, implement and manage engineering projects in diverse and pluralistic teams, ability to communicate at different levels, perseverance in the face of failures and crisis, creativeness to improvise innovative solutions, maintenance of physical and mental health, ability to invent and implement eco-friendly engineering solutions, and smartness to work within stipulated time-frames, etc. Large residential student communities prepare suitable context for engineering students to nurture their general management skills, if carefully planned. In the current paper, we present some innovative models and appropriate methods to convert large residential student communities into an arena where students can train themselves in general management skills. It also presents some results of two years of implementation of such methods in a men’s hostel, which accommodates youngsters between 17–19 years of age in their first year of undergraduate engineering study.Copyright

Cultivation of Engineering Soft Skills Within the Constraints of a Prescribed Curriculum

Engineering soft skills are required of an engineer to excel in his/her career and profession. For engineering education institutions affiliated to a central university and working with a prescribed curriculum, it is often difficult to find time for real-world training of students in soft skills. The current paper summarizes the programs designed for undergraduate engineering students of an affiliated engineering institution in order to circumvent this problem. They integrate training in engineering soft skills with the regular academic schedule exerting minimal extra-loading for the students and ensuring individual attention. The distribution of training programs in time also facilitates natural and gradual development of the values, attitudes and soft-skills. Further, integration of soft skill training programs into regular academic schedule enhances the interest of students in academics.Copyright

Head-heart-hands-habit approach for integrating science teaching into engineering curriculum

Even as everybody agrees with the fact that the developments in mathematics and science would steer the course of engineering and technology, the question, “How to integrate science teaching into engineering curriculum?” remains an unsettled issue. The core competence of the faculty who teach basic science and mathematics to the students of engineering often remains a fundamental challenge. Either a teacher of engineering with shaking foundations in mathematics and science deals with the topic or a teacher of science or mathematics with not background information of engineering handles them. In either case, an issue with the core competence of the teacher is bound to occur. Is it possible to develop a novel approach to integrate science teaching into an engineering curriculum? The department of Physics of Rajagiri School of Engineering & Technology, India has developed a unique approach to this problem based on ten years of experiments and fine-tuning. The method is called “4H Approach”, which combines the faculties of Head, Heart, Hands and Habits (4Hs) to bring about a natural integration of science teaching into an engineering curriculum. Here head aspect stands for clear and distinct understanding of the fundamental concepts of science, heart aspect stands for appreciation of those concepts based on their historical and biographical significance, hands aspect stands for actual measurement of quantities related to those concepts in a laboratory and the habit aspect stands for development of skills and values associated with engineering career. The method is also aimed at nurturing in the aspirants of engineering profession an important outcome required by Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), namely, “Ability to apply mathematics, science and engineering principles.” Different programs and projects are developed to realize these goals related to a course in Engineering Physics. The feedback from students suggests that they are generally appreciative of these programs and it helps them to integrate their study of basic sciences into their engineering curriculum. The paper also charts the future course of development of the 4H Approach to excellently suit the emerging requirements on the next-generation engineers.

A Model Curriculum for Creativity Instruction Integrated Into the Bachelor Program of Engineering Professional Development

The creativity and innovation are of great importance for the new generation engineers who practice their profession in a globalized work place, gravely challenged by questions on sustainability of engineering products and services. Correspondingly, the students of engineering need to develop skills of creative problem solving and innovation. The paper presents a sample curriculum for creativity instruction to the students of engineering. It is aimed at familiarizing students with the creative thinking patterns of great engineers and inventors and to allow them to engage with key principles of creativity and innovation. The theoretical session of the course is planned for the Freshman Level. It consists of five modules namely, 1) Creativity and Innovation in Engineering, 2) Theories of Creativity, 3) Methods of Creative Problem Solving, 4) Team Creativity, and 5) From Creativity to Innovation. The practical sessions of the course is organized distributed in time over the entire Bachelor program spanning over four years in the form of “Hour of Creativity”. Through the practical sessions students are equipped to develop and implement creative concepts for their Senior Level Capstone Design Project (Final Project). Thus the creativity instruction is well-integrated to the Bachelor program of engineering professional development. The general effectiveness of the curriculum for creativity instruction is also discussed.Copyright

SEN Analysis of Stratified Hot Water Heat Stores With Respect to Axial Position and Number of Charging-Discharging Equipments

SEN analysis [Solar Energy, 2007, Vol. 81, pp. 1043–1054] is a robust characterization method for stratified thermal energy stores (TES). It integrates the concerns of the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics into single efficiency index. The First Law concern is incorporated into the definition of SEN efficiency index through energy response factor (ER ) and the Second Law concern through entropy generation ratio (REG ). SEN analysis thus estimates the ability of a TES to store energy and exergy. In the current paper SEN analysis is utilized to characterize hot water heat stores (HWHS) with respect to the axial position and number of charging/discharging equipments they possess. Diffusers or flow-guides are used as charging-discharging equipments in view of reducing turbulent mixing within the HWHS, especially in the entrance and exit ports. For HWHS charging-discharging equipments are commonly positioned in the top-most and bottom-most regions of the HWHS in order to avoid development of dead volume, i.e., volume that does not take part in the charging-discharging process. Axially placed conical diffusers are observed to circumvent the issue of dead volumes. However, the effect of their axial position on the entropy generation is not yet studied. Further, one may use intermediate charging-discharging equipment in association with the original pair in order to feed or withdraw the working fluid into/from the HWHS at different heights. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the position and number of axially placed conical diffusers with zero diffuser angles inside a cylindrical HWHS. The thermal field information obtained from a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis is subjected to the SEN analysis to achieve required design insights.Copyright