Sensors for a Weather Balloon - a Classroom Design Experience
Abstract
Undergraduate engineering students need meaningful design experiences in their course work. These experiences allow them to see the practical implications of their courses, to consider the interplay between system components, and to also view external forces, economics, safety, environmental impact, and cost in away that is not outside their own background. Accreditation organizations now require a "design continuum" in engineering programs. The continuum will take students through simple design exercises in lower-level courses and bring them through successively more challenging experiences to a capstone design. We believe that this is a path that all engineering students should take to reach competence in their trade. We have also found that it is very difficult to find realistic, simple, unconstrained design exercises for lower level engineering courses. In this paper we outline a project that was used in a junior-level sensors course for systems engineering majors. The project required each student to design a portion of the systems needed to successfully complete a balloon-borne environment sensing mission. In this mission a weather balloon is to carry a student designed instrument package to its maximum altitude, where the balloon will burst and the package will return to earth safely. Data gathered during the mission may be recorded in the instrumentation package for later play-back or it may be telemetered back to earth receiving stations. We have found this type of exercise to be an excellent vehicle for discussing project management and the tradeoffs that are often necessary between cost, weight and complexity. In execution the students find that a relatively simple concept can be very complex.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA575304
Entities
People
- Carl Wick
- George Piper
- Jerry Watts
- Svetlana Avramov-Zamurovic
Organizations
- United States Naval Academy