Tag: engineering

Entrepreneurial-Minded Learning

[Dean Ayanna Howard] In 2017, The Ohio State University joined the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network, known as KEEN, a coalition of engineering programs from across the nation committed to preparing its students with an entrepreneurial mindset. As a KEEN member, we are focused on integrating an entrepreneurial mindset into undergraduate engineering. It has become part of our culture. We believe that an entrepreneurial mindset, coupled with engineering skills, expressed through collaboration and communication and founded on character, is the key to unleashing human potential in order to solve societal problems.

Professor David Tomasko is the College of Engineering’s associate dean for academic programs and student services.

He was part of the team that advocated for our involvement in KEEN, and he’s currently co-leading a KEEN-funded project. David, I’m thrilled you’re on the pod today! Let’s talk about engineering entrepreneurs, or should we say Engi-preneurs. [David Tomasko] I love that, thanks for having me.

Anytime we get  to talk about education, I’m all in.

[Dean Ayanna Howard] So all of us know what an entrepreneur is,  but help our listeners understand what an entrepreneurial mindset is and why it’s so important for our students to have.

[ David Tomasko] Entrepreneurial mindset is a framework that the Kern Family Foundation and kind of began as a way of describing what they thought Engineers ought to have as they go out into the workforce. It’s really centered around three C’s: curiosity, connections, and creating value. In many ways, instilling an entrepreneurial mindset involves kind of turning engineering education into a process away from a building block of here’s what I know and trying to get students to think about what are the opportunities for me to make an impact with what I know, it’s all about connotation, right? When I think of an entrepreneur like yourself, I think of  someone who has started up a company or wants to start up a company.

They want to be out on their  own, very independent. But when you think about it, you don’t have to have that drive to actually understand and think like an entrepreneur.

In fact, many corporations have called it entrepreneurship, right? The entrepreneurial mindset is really capturing that aspect of  entrepreneurship that is about seeking and finding the opportunity to make an impact, right?

And I  can do that regardless of the type of job I’m in.

I don’t have to be the person in charge,  and I don’t have to be trying to build a company. But I can do it within my local context if I’m  working for a large corporation or for myself. [Dean Ayanna Howard] So, I love this concept of  creating value and really thinking about engineers and our role in creating impact.

Of course,  it’s about thinking about the value. So, if you think about this framework and the KEEN framework with the 3 C’s, how have we brought that to our classes?

[David Tomasko] It’s an ongoing process, and you can imagine that those concepts are very broad. So, individual faculty members are  encouraged to promote this kind of framework and then be creative with it. What we’ve done so far  since our involvement with KEEN back in 2018-2019 or so as we started with the first-year program, the  1181-1182 sequence. What that has turned into is away from a set of lab experiences where you  are simply demonstrating. Here’s what electrical engineering might do, here’s what  ISC might be, so on and so forth.

It’s now more of a project, and it’s presented to the students as, “Here’s an opportunity for you to make an impact. How might you approach this problem using the design process, for example?” Which involves curiosity, involves having to drawing connections to everything else  you’ve learned, and most importantly, it’s about creating value for others.

Which is a different way of thinking  rather than the student being here simply to absorb information. It’s really kind of empowering students to think about how they can apply information.

[Dean Ayanna Howard]

So, I’m pretty sure that our listeners would have never imagined someone saying Engineers, faculty, curiosity, and creativity, but that’s really what it is. [David Tomasko] Yeah, very much so. In fact, the other  end of the spectrum where we’re applying this is in the Capstone program. Where many of the faculty  actually, let the students apply creativity. When you present this framework to a person teaching Capstone projects, they look at it and say, “Yeah, that’s what I do.

We just haven’t called it that.” Right? And so this is the other aspect of the framework that’s actually very helpful to engineering education. Is that it gets all the different disciplines speaking a common language around this because our students are going to go out and have to work together anyway. Wouldn’t it be nice if they all had kind of a common language upon which they could build?

[Dean Ayanna Howard]

That would be very nice, and I love this  concept of students entering their first contact with engineering in the first year of engineering  through this framework and then when they end their journey here at Ohio State in capstone,  which means that they’ve understood this whole connection of “I have no idea what engineering is, now I understand  creating value,” and then as a senior, it’s like, “Oh, I got it.” [David Tomasko] That’s the idea, right? and you and I both know that there’s a lot of hard work that goes on in between.

And in fact the current aspect of the grant, the current faculty we’re trying to work with, are actually those middle faculty.

 We’d like to see them reinforce this all the way through so they can find a way when they’re teaching digital design, digital circuitry design, or teaching thermodynamics classes that are traditionally very hard.

You can still talk about curiosity, creating value, and connections even in those very hard-core engineering courses. [Dean Ayanna Howard] I’m sold on this KEEN framework.  Since we’ve become KEEN members, what differences have you noticed among our faculty, students,  curriculum, and of course, as a data person, how are we actually measuring impact? [David Tamasko]  It’s fascinating.

We are one of the few members of the network that actually has an engineering education department and education research faculty who are actually building tools to be able to do such assessments.

 As you referred to. I’d like to if i can talk a little bit about one aspect of our current project where we’re trying to figure that out. Cause honestly most of the impact we observe is anecdotal at this point. I can’t point to numbers, right and I know you would ask for that. So, it’s a little frustrating, right.

So, one of the things we’re trying to do, is actually trying to measure the impact on students and see if our teaching in this framework has changed the way a student talks about and expresses their work on engineering problem-solving.

So, we have reintegrated or revised and rewritten the rubrics used in the OHI\O hackathon and the Megathon, which are strictly student-driven not classroom activities, right.

So, the students are kind of free to express themselves in their own way, and we’re going to try and measure whether students articulate some of this 3C language and some of the framework language as we have them present their hack projects. With no requirements to do so, we’re going to see if it bubbles up. I fully expect that the first time that we measure this, we’re going to get very little.

That’s just the nature of students right. But over time if we really are making an impact on the way a student thinks about their own problem-solving process, they’ll start to talk about the idea about creating value in doing what they’re doing.

Or the idea they connected with their solution from among all of the things they have learned before. So, that’s what we hope to measure, as we go through this project. [Dean Ayanna Howard] So, you mentioned the current project.

SO, this is the one title extending the EM ecosystem from the research professional practice and the student experience?

[David Tomasko] Yes, [Dean Ayanna Howard] Okay. [David Tomasko] And that’s the student experience piece that I just described. [Dean Ayanna Howard] Okay. So, there’s a lot of words in that title.

[David Tomasko] Yes, [laughs] and so, thinking about I know it only begin a few months ago. Give us somethings you are seeking to accomplish with this new project? [David Tomasko] Sure, it’s really  broken into three sub-projects, which is why the title is so long because it has to include all of those but the student experience piece,  and what I just spoke about, with trying to measure student responses out of the hackathon. The other big piece  is the education research piece, where we are trying to actually develop assessment instruments that that get at the idea of making connections and creating value, and curiosity. It turns out that as you might guess not engineering education research, but education research there’s a whole a lot of work on curiosity, that’s well-known and well-developed topic.

And There are already assessments out there, and we’re simply adapting them into the engineering education space. There’s very little in the space of trying to measure how students think about creating value and how they do it. And how they make connections, So, were actually in the research space, developing assessment that we then hope other faculty across the network, nationwide will help us validate and help us use. So that we can collect that kind of impact data as to how the way that people implement the 3Cs in their classroom has the effect on students’ outcomes. That’s project 2. Project 3 is really that other piece that I alluded to earlier about back getting more faculty across all the disciplines. Trying to integrate the framework into this the engineering core courses.

The places that are the just notorious for being the hard courses that that have so much homework and so much difficult material, that it really is ripe for a bit of rejuvenation I would say in the approach to teaching those courses.

So, that’s the third part, we call them professional learning communities.

Where we involve the faculty and we also involve graduate students allow especially if they want to become faculty, we do graduate students and postdocs in there that’s why we call them professional learning communities instead of Faculty learning communities.

students and postdocs in there. That’s why we call them professional learning communities instead  of Faculty learning communities. [Dean Ayanna Howard]: So you know, I can think about what the  professional learning communities. We have some control because they’re in College of Engineering,  they’re all at Ohio State. But you mentioned something around sharing assessments around the KEEN Network and being able to measure the impact.

Yeah, if you think about the difficulties with that, any thoughts? [David Tomasko]: Well, so it turns out that there is a well-established network.

The network is about,

I want to say, 60 to 70 institutions strong now. And I’ll just, you know, for listeners, if they want to visit engineeringunleashed.com, which is kind of the home of the network, you can log in and download all of these different approaches that faculty have taken.

That’s our sharing space. That’s the space where all the faculty are putting things up and saying, “Here’s what I’m doing. This has to do with creating value in a structural dynamics class. This is what I’m doing to show connections in thermodynamics.” Right, and you can actually go in there and search by your discipline, search by your topic, or search by one of the framework keywords and see other things that people are doing.

So, it will actually, it sounds difficult to get other people to get involved, but it turns out that once you get into the network and you make some friends, we are, you know, it’s actually quite easy. We have several of our faculty who are also jointly working with projects led out of Rowan University, out of Bucknell, all over the place. So, it really is kind of the foundation that fosters the development of this network in a really impactful way on the faculty. [Dean Ayanna Howard]: So, what’s interesting is that we know there’s more than 60 to 70 engineering colleges around the world. But yet, you can have someone who is interested, who’s maybe not necessarily tied into the KEEN Network, just engineeringunleashed.com, and they have access, which is wonderful. [David Tomasko] Exactly, exactly. [Dean Ayanna Howard] So,  this entrepreneurial-minded learning could be a nationwide initiative, really? [David Tomasko]: Yes, yes, absolutely. [Dean Ayanna Howard]: So, it makes so much sense to me.

I mean,  if you think about when we were undergrads, it was nothing like this.

[David Tomasko]: No, that’s true. You know, I’ve gotten to think, especially as I was looking over  what we were going to talk about today, I started to realize another way of framing  engineering education is that students come out of high school and they’re still used to a very  transactional form of education. You do this. I will grade it, and I will return to you some  points or a grade.

Our first-year program still has to kind of operate in that way because that’s  the mindset that students are coming to us in. And then they’re trying their best to kind of get them  into a different kind of mindset in that first year so that when they get into the second year,  we can start really developing foundational tools and knowledge that they have to do in  their discipline.

You know, like it or not, your students are still going to have to survive differential equations, still going to have to survive, you know, statics and dynamics, and whatever the disciplines are. But then, really, I think the real impact of this mindset is showing up as students get to be seniors and they get to – they start to develop that foundational knowledge and now learn how to apply it. It’s the opportunities that we start to open their eyes to.

And so, I think the real change that we’re going to see as a result of the network is that students are going to graduate knowing that: A) they’ve got knowledge, B) they know how to apply it, but C) they start to see the world as opportunities instead of just tasks and assignments.

Right, that’s – that, to me, is the real value. And furthermore, you’ll have not just mechanical  engineers coming out thinking that, you’ll have Electrical Engineers, Computer Science, Chemicals,  Material Scientists, and they’ll all kind of – you know, if we do this well and infiltrate it well,  you’ll have a whole lot of students coming out, and they’ll actually make connections with each  other much more quickly, and they’ll get off to a running start in their careers much more quickly.

[ Dean Ayanna Howard] So, mine is the little part about learning differential equations for  engineers. I actually [ David Tomasko] substitute discreet math.

[Dean Ayanna Howard] I mean, if you  really think about this concept, I love the three C’s of the entrepreneurial mindset for students:  curiosity, connections, and of course, creating value.

I mean, honestly, I wish we could apply this concept throughout our entire lives of all the things that go on, yeah. So, while I asked David to be my guest today, there are so many faculty and staff involved in this movement, and I’m grateful for each of them.

The world needs more engine webpreneurs, and they might as well be Buckeyes. Thank you for having me.

I’m looking forward to seeing all of this play out in real time.

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Understanding Shear Force and Bending Moment Diagrams

Shear force and bending moment diagrams are powerful, graphical methods that every mechanical and civil engineer should know how to use to analyse a beam under loading In this video. I ll explain exactly how to master these diagrams and we will see how they can be used to understand how a beam is loaded. I want to start by explaining what shear forces and bending moments actually are When a beam is loaded, internal forces develop within it to maintain equilibrium. These internal forces have two components: We have shear forces oriented in the vertical direction And we also have normal forces which are oriented along the axis of the beam. If the beam is sagging, the top of the beam will get shorter, and so the normal forces in the top of the beam will be compressive. The bottom of the beam will get longer, and so the normal forces in the bottom of the beam will be tensile. Each of the tensile normal forces has a corresponding compressive force, which is equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction. As such, these forces don t produce a net normal force, but they do produce a moment. This means that we can conveniently represent the internal forces acting on the beam cross section using just two resultants one shear force, which is a resultant of the vertical internal forces and one bending moment, which is a resultant of the normal internal forces. This is a very common way of representing the internal forces within a beam Drawing the shear force and bending moment diagrams is just figuring out what these internal forces are at each location along the beam. These resultant shear forces and bending moments will depend on the loads. Acting on the beam and the way in which the beam is supported, Beams can be loaded in a number of ways. The most common being concentrated forces, distributed forces and concentrated moments. Beams can also be supported in a number of different ways. They can have pinned supports roller supports or be fully fixed, which each restrain the beam in different ways Pinned supports, prevent vertical and horizontal displacements, but allow rotation Roller supports, prevent vertical displacement, but allow horizontal displacement and rotation Fixed supports, prevent all displacements and rotation. If a certain degree of freedom is restrained at a support, we will have a corresponding reaction force or reaction moment at that location. For example, rotations are permitted for a pinned support, so there is no reaction moment, but displacements in the vertical and horizontal directions are prevented. So we will have horizontal and vertical reaction forces. So how do you determine the shear forces and bending moments within a beam? There are three main steps we need to follow. First, we draw a free body diagram of the beam. This shows all of the applied and reaction loads acting on the beam. The next step is to calculate the magnitude of the reaction, forces and reaction moments at all of the beam supports. We do this using the concept of equilibrium To maintain equilibrium. All of the forces in the vertical and horizontal directions should cancel each other out. Similarly, all of the moments acting at every point along the beam should cancel each other out. This gives us a set of simple equations. We can solve to calculate the reaction, forces and moments If we can calculate all of the reaction loads using the three equilibrium equations. The beam is said to be statically determinate For some beam configurations like this one shown here. We won t be able to calculate all of the reaction loads because we have too many unknowns and not enough equilibrium. Equations, In this case the beam is said to be statically indeterminate. This beam has 4 reaction forces, but we only have 3 equilibrium equations To solve this beam, we would need to use slightly more complicated methods and consider boundary conditions In this video. I will only cover statically determinate cases, where we can use the equilibrium equations to calculate all of the reaction loads Once we have calculated all of the reaction loads. The third and final step is to figure out the internal shear forces and bending moments at every location. Along the beam To do this, we will use the concept of equilibrium again. If we cut our beam at any location, the internal forces and moments need to cancel out the external forces and moments so that equilibrium is maintained. This allows us to easily calculate the shear force and bending moment at each location along the beam. All we need to do is start from one side of the beam and move the location of the cut along the beam, calculating the shear forces and bending moments. As we go. Now is a good time to define the sign convention we will be using Applied forces. Will be positive if they are acting in the downwards direction For shear forces and bending moments? The positive sign convention will be as shown here If the beam is on the left side of our cut shear forces pointing downwards will be positive If the beam is on the right side of our cut shear forces, pointing upwards will be positive. Positive bending moments will be those that put the lower section of the beam into tension. Another way to think about it is that bending moments which cause sagging of the beam are positive and those that cause hogging of the beam are negative. Let’s take a look at an example of a beam with pinned and roller supports loaded by two concentrated forces. First, we draw the free body diagram. We can then use the equilibrium equations to determine the unknown reaction forces at Point A and Point B. The sum of the forces in the vertical direction is equal to zero, so R, A plus R B, is equal to 15 plus 6. Because H, A is the only horizontal force, it must be equal to zero. We also know that the sum of the moments about any point along our beam must be zero. Let’s consider the moments about Point B That gives us this equation, which we can solve to determine that R A is equal to 12 By substituting R A into the previous equation. We can deduce that R B is equal to 9. Now that all of the external loads acting on the beam are defined, we can draw the shear force and bending moment diagrams. We will start from the left hand side of the beam. Let’s draw the free body diagram for a location immediately to the right of the 12 kN reaction force To maintain equilibrium. The shear force must be equal to the reaction force. We can draw this on our shear force diagram. The shear force will be constant until we reach the next applied force. The bending moment must be equal to the 12 kN reaction force, multiplied by the distance X to the reaction force. This gives us the equation for a straight line, which we can draw on our bending moment diagram. We then repeat the process by moving the location of our cut further to the right. This time we place the cut immediately after the 15 kN force, and we draw the free body diagram again to determine the shear force and the bending moment. We repeat this process until we have covered the full length of the beam We end up with the complete shear force and bending moment diagrams for the beam. That example was a fairly simple one For cases with more complex loading, drawing the shear force and bending moment diagrams can be more difficult. There are relationships between the applied loads, shear forces and bending moments, which will help us better understand what our diagrams should look like. Let’s consider a beam loaded by an arbitrary distributed force. We can zoom in to look at an infinitesimally small segment of the beam with a width equal to D X and draw the free body diagram Over such a short section of the beam. The distributed force can be assumed to be uniform and we can replace it with an equivalent concentrated force By applying the equilibrium equations to this free body diagram. It is possible to demonstrate that the following relationships exist between the applied distributed force, the shear force graph and the bending moment graph. The quantity D V over D X is the slope of the shear force curve and at a given point along the beam, it is equal to minus the distributed force. Similarly, D M over D X is the slope of the bending moment curve and at a given point it is equal to the shear force. If we integrate the first equation, we can show that the change in shear force between two points is equal to the area. Under the loading diagram between those two points, And if we integrate the second equation, we can show that the change in bending moment between two points is equal to the area under the shear force curve. This is really useful information we can use to help construct or sense check our shear force and bending moment diagrams. Let’s take a look at an example. This beam has an applied, distributed, force and a concentrated force. Let s quickly draw the shear force and bending moment diagrams By using the free body diagram method. We can show that the bending moment curve for the section of the beam under the distributed force is defined by the quadratic equation: 4 X, 2. 34. X. 68. If we differentiate this equation, we get 8 X 34, which, based on the D M over D X equation above we now know, is the equation for the shear force curve. In this section of the beam. If we differentiate again, we get 8, which is the equation for the distributed force. This is a great way to sense, check your shear force and bending moment diagrams. Another way of checking your diagrams is using the area equations I mentioned earlier. The area under the shear force curve highlighted here is equal to 34 times 2, which is 68. This is equal to the change in bending moment over this section of the beam. We can also calculate the area under the shear force diagram for the beam section under the distributed force. The total area of this section is equal to 72 3 minus 12 3, which is 60. This is equal to the change in bending moment of 60 kNm over this section of the beam Where concentrated forces are applied. There is a sudden jump in the shear force diagram and where concentrated moments are applied. There is a sudden jump in the bending moment diagram. These equations will not be applicable across discontinuities in the diagrams. One final observation we can make based on these equations is that when the shear force is equal to zero, the bending moment curve will be at a local minimum or maximum. Let s look at one. Last example: Here we have a cantilever with an applied concentrated moment of 120 kNm and a distributed force of 6 kN m. Again we start by drawing the free body diagram, Because the support is fully fixed. We have vertical and horizontal reaction forces, R, A and H A and a reaction moment M A Let’s. Look at our first equilibrium equation. The sum of forces in the vertical direction is equal to zero. In this case, the only forces acting in the vertical direction are the reaction force, R, A and the distributed force. So R A is equal to 6 times 3, which is 18 H. A is the only force in the horizontal direction, so it must be equal to zero. Next, we can take the sum of the moments acting at point, A In calculating the moment caused by a uniformly distributed force. You can remember that it is equal to a concentrated force located in the middle point of the load. This gives us M A equals 21 To calculate our shear forces and bending moments. We will start on the left side of the beam and move towards the right. This is our first free body diagram The shear force calculation is easy, as we only need to consider the reaction force of 18 kN. The bending moment needs to take into account the reaction moment and the reaction force At X equals zero. The bending moment is equal to the reaction moment of 21 kNm As we move to the right. We also need to consider the moment caused by the 18 kN reaction force. This gives us the equation for a straight line. We can then move our cut to the right of the concentrated moment. The moment won’t affect the shear force, which will remain constant at 18 kN until we reach the distributed force, But it does cause the bending moment to suddenly drop by 120 kNm After the drop. The bending moment is again defined by a straight line. Things get a little more tricky when we reach the distributed force, We can replace the uniformly distributed force by an equivalent concentrated force with a magnitude of 6 multiplied by the length X over which the force is applied. This force is located at a distance of X. 2 from our cut, We can then calculate the shear force and bending moment equations using the normal approach. The bending moment in this section of the beam is defined by a quadratic equation. No loads are acting on the small one metre section to the right of the distributed force, so shear forces and bending moments in that section will be equal to zero. Although we can’t calculate displacements from these diagrams, we can use the bending moment information to predict the deformed shape of the beam Where the bending moment is positive, the beam will be sagging and where it is negative, it will be hogging Where the bending moment Is zero? The beam will be straight That will give us a deformed shape. That looks something like this: That’s it for this quick, look at shear forces and bending moments in beams. I hope you learned something new and if you enjoyed the video, please don t forget to subscribe.

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