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ME 4131
THERMAL ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING LABORATORY

Overview of Course

The Thermal Environmental Engineering Laboratory (ME 4131) is designed for senior undergraduate mechanical engineering students. The class consists of a 50 minute lecture taught jointly by Dr. Kuehn and Dr. Ramsey and a 3 hour lab session led by the Teaching Assistant. The lecture covers the general theoretical principles of the lab. The lab session consists of a 1-2 hour lecture that focuses on specific principles and applications, writing of a data acquisition computer program, and about 1 hour of data recording.

Students conduct experiments in four areas: air handling systems, refrigeration systems, active solar energy systems, and airflow visualization. Measurements are performed on heating and cooling coils, particulate air filters, fans, a walk-in cooler, a water chiller, solar energy instrumentation, flat plate solar collectors, and a ventilation chamber. The results from these experiments are then used to draw conclusions based on the theoretical principles presented earlier.

This is a writing intensive course, so a large portion of the course is focused on the writing of laboratory reports. The students submit 5 informal reports, 2 formal reports, and 5 data sheets. The data sheets are simply data reduction, with diagrams, tables and graphs. The informal reports are written in a standard report format aimed at the students' engineering peers. The formal reports are completed with two drafts, with feedback from the Teaching Assistant after the first draft.

There are also 10 pre-lab quizzes to ensure that students have read the lab manual and are prepared for each lab session. Grades are based on the following criteria: 90% written reports, 5% quizzes, and 5% data reduction sheets and peer evaluation.

Goals

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Test and document the performance of real building mechanical systems
• Operate potentially dangerous laboratory equipment in a safe manner
• Write effective laboratory reports
• Develop expertise in the operation of automatic data acquisition systems
• Analyze experimental data including an uncertainty analysis
• Interpret experimental results and make comparisons with theoretical system performance predictions

Objectives

Students will be expected to:

• Understand the components of actual heating, ventilating, air-conditioning, refrigeration and solar heating systems and how they operate
• Design and implement a test procedure for a small refrigeration system
• Gather data as a team using the data acquisition system in the laboratory
• Write data acquisition and analysis programs using the C++ language
• Develop graphs, tables, and diagrams that accurately present laboratory procedures and results
• Compare theoretical and actual system performance using laboratory results
• Write clear and concise reports that conform to the standard technical report format, including proper referencing of source material

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