Addressing the Aeronautical Engineering Skills Shortage

In response to the world skills shortage of aeronautical engineers, in 2016 Milton Keynes College began a dedicated Aeronautical Engineering BTEC. This course, headed up by Sean Hainsworth, former RAF Aerospace Engineer, first began as a trial. Following the course’s success, Milton Keynes College has a full cohort of 40 applicants aiming to start in September 2018.

Wind Tunnel in the Syllabus

Students are required to complete projects that involve the design, manufacture and test of aerofoils throughout the year. As part of the course, students have a project to design and build three types of aerofoil, testing with three angles in the wind tunnel (0 degrees, 5 degrees and the critical 15 degree stall angle) and then applying three different equations (lift, drag and wind speed).

Pearson BTEC Level 3 Diploma in Aeronautical Engineering

The AF1300 Subsonic Wind Tunnel is used as a standard piece of equipment in specialist aeronautical engineering facilities across the globe. For the Pearson BTEC Level 3 Diploma in Aeronautical Engineering, the equipment utilised for the following learning units:

• Unit 5 Mechanical Principles and Applications
• Unit 48 Theory of Flight
• Unit 68  Principles and Applications of Aircraft Mechanical Science

About the AF1300 Subsonic Wind Tunnel

The AF1300 is a widely used piece of aerospace engineering teaching equipment that allows undergraduate and research students to study the principles of aerodynamics. The compact size reduces space requirements and experiment time compared to full sized wind tunnels, due to the ease of model changeover, of which can be switched with minimal or no supervision. The wind tunnel is available with a range of different models (standard cylinder, NACA standard aerofoils, 3D drag models, flat plate drag models, flat plate boundary layer models with tapings and aircraft models with low and high wing configurations). For more information, click here.

Bradford University Faculty of Engineering and Informatics has a number of different learning spaces to support a variety of engineering courses, including a multi-disciplinary engineering laboratory (360 degree view of the lab available here). This is an open plan laboratory, which offers a practical learning environment and efficient use of space, which incorporates a wide range of TecQuipment’s bench-mounted equipment, including a broad range of structures and materials testing equipment, such as the Thick Cylinder Apparatus.

The department also has an extensive range of Engineering Science units. These provide the perfect introduction to the fundamental principles in mechanical engineering and are often used in combination with more complex varieties of the experiments (such as the ES Gears Train Kit and the Geared Systems).

Check out the video made during a little down time at Bradford University for the Thick Cylinder Apparatus from our Materials Testing range:

Engineers are being asked to be evermore inventive, to solve progressively more complex challenges with increasingly more eloquent solutions. Therefore, there is a requirement for engineering undergraduates to be adaptable, agile in thought and occasionally be able to think differently.

A complex picture, where to begin…

There has been a decisive change in engineering education over the last 20 years. A transformation from an intense mathematical and theoretical study approach to a more practical approach with an emphasis on design.

Furthermore, governments are beginning to influence policy in tertiary education through new initiatives, such as the Tertiary Education Framework (TEF) in the UK. The emphasis from government is on rewarding institutions that are more innovative in their teaching approach, for example, through building closer relationships with industry and improving student experiences. However, when developing engineering undergraduate courses for tomorrow’s engineers there is an increasing number of complex and sometimes conflicting challenges. Five of the greatest challenges are:

1. Gaining a competitive edge The increasingly competitive tertiary education sector has left every educator seeking points of differentiation for their programs in order to attract students.
2. Engaging and retaining students Approaches to learning can be described in terms of the what (the value of what is being learnt), the why (the motive for learning) and the how (the strategic approach taken to learning). In a more general sense, educators discuss both surface and deep approaches to learning. A surface approach is adopted by a student who sees little value in the learning material and their motivation is simply to reproduce information to meet the demands of the course and to get a pass mark. A deep approach to learning is adopted by a student who sees great value in the knowledge they discover for continual mental growth and change. The student is motivated to make sense of and to find meaning in the information they receive and they seek to relate the new knowledge to previous knowledge and apply it to everyday experiences. So how can students be encouraged to fall in love with their subjects and intrinsically adopt a deep learning approach?
3. Growing classroom sizes In many markets around the world, including the UK, there continues to be a shortage of engineers¹. This often leads to larger class sizes, especially as universities seek resource-saving synergies such as shared first year modules.
4. Adapting to a changing world The maturing information and cyber ages are having significant impact on both educational approaches and engineering practice. How do educators adapt the learning environment to account for and take advantage of these changes?
5. Meeting employer’s needs  Increasingly engineering undergraduates are finding employment with small to medium size enterprises^2. Employers are calling for graduate engineers to be innovative, self-motivated and creative problem solvers, as well as possessing up-to-date knowledge and skills.

How can tertiary educators develop courses that can meet these challenges?

What is your teaching philosophy? As it turns out this is a very important question since our teaching philosophy is the foundation of our teaching practice. It is also a loaded question since there is no perfect philosophy and our teaching methods are often constrained by many factors including time, resources and the current political will of our parent institution.

What can be agreed upon is that engineering is a very hands-on discipline and so engineering educators have naturally adopted teaching methods that encourage the student to do something. For example, laboratory sessions are common in most engineering modules. The philosophy of ‘doing’ can be found at the heart of many learning approaches such as active learning, blended learning, project based learning, problem based learning, discovery based learning, and experiential learning. All these ideological approaches have their roots in constructivism. When applied to education, constructive approaches focus on helping students build knowledge by making meaning between their experiences and their ideas. However, before we get lost in the confusing and often unproductive world of educational ideologies, let us review some methods that may be able to meet the challenges outlined before.

One framework that has been scrutinised and demonstrated to work in an engineering environment is learning cycles. There are a number of learning cycles proposed in the literature but they share many similarities. The cycles generally involve some or all of the following steps:

1. Initial engagement The students must be inspired to want to learn the subject. This may be achieved through mini lectures (no more than 20 minutes) which include some fundamental concepts, demonstrations and authentic industry based examples.
2. Knowledge exploration Based on the student’s current knowledge, the students are allowed to explore a topic. It is probably wise to offer guidance to students exploring a topic. In the information age, many uncollaborated sources of information are accessible through search engines.
3. Action Design, build, report. The important aspect of action is to apply the learnt knowledge and skills. This is commonly performed in a graded assessment.
4. Reflection It is important that the students reflect on what they have learnt and how their new knowledge fits with previous knowledge. Reflective exercises can also help the students express what they still do not know and help them develop more sophisticated problem solving strategies.
5. Application It is important that the cycle be completed by giving the students opportunities to apply their new knowledge and test their new strategies.

In combination with learning cycles, engineering educators seek to set challenges based in the real world.

When possible the students can be encouraged to develop creative and innovative solutions and to communicate clearly their strategies and outcomes. Despite this learning approach having many benefits there are also many challenges. Tutors often find that the high resource and contact time requirements are prohibitive, especially with large class sizes. Furthermore, a practical based learning cycle approach may require new assessment items and other supportive documentation to be prepared by time poor academics. So for many the continuation of lecturing, tutorials and laboratory sessions is the only option that can be prepared by the start of term.

However… with some inventiveness maybe some of these challenges can be overcome. For example, tutors could encourage peer-to-peer learning, invite industry collaborates into the classroom to mentor, and create learning environments that help students understand their limitations and allow them to learn at their own pace.

It is clear that there is no magical concept that will suit all educational scenarios. So maybe in the future engineering educators will be required to be more like their graduates. They will need to be adaptable, agile in thought and to occasionally think differently.

– Ends –

References:

• Engineering UK 2017 – the state of engineering. Engineering UK report.
• Business population estimates for the UK and regions 2017, Nov 2017. Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

This blog post was written by Dr Ben Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Nottingham Trent University, UK.

Solihull College and University Centre recently introduced an Aerospace Engineering and Maintenance Degree. A new facility was created, which required a substantial investment in specialist aeronautical educational equipment to teach everything from the basic theory of flight looking at drag and lift equations through to more advanced topics that look at boundary layers, pressure distribution and wake investigations. This was part of a £2.5m spend on the aviation and aeronautical facilities at the Woodlands campus of Solihull College and University Centre.

“After inviting companies to bid for the new equipment, we selected TecQuipment based on the premium specifications, competitive price, and reputation for quality of service supported by the excellent pre-sales experience,” commented Paul Matthews, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator at Solihull College.

Teaching Fundamentals of a Jet Engine

For teaching students how single shaft gas turbines on aircraft work, the College purchased a GT100 Turbo Jet Trainer. Powered by Kerosene, students can accurately replicate the behaviour of a single-shaft gas turbine that would be used in aircraft. The self-contained design allows students to learn the following:

• Effect on thrust generation by variation in rotational speed and propelling nozzle area
• Isentropic, polytropic and mechanical efficiencies of compressor, combustion chamber and turbine
• Pressure ratios of turbine, compressor and nondimensional characteristics
• Combustion chamber pressure losses and combustion efficiencies
• Specific fuel consumption, thermal efficiency, air standard cycle, work ratio and heat balance

Theory of Flight

In addition to the BSc degree course, Solihull College also offers a HNC in aircraft maintenance, and a HND.

Salman Javed, Aerospace Lecturer at Solihull College explained “Rather than the BEng version of an aerospace engineering degree that focus on the design of aircraft, the BSc is designed to be more-hands on. This focus means that practical experiments play a greater role in the learning process.”

The aerodynamics lab has an array of different pieces of apparatus for teaching all of these courses.

Aerodynamics Principles

For teaching the foundations of aerodynamics, Solihull College purchased an AF1300 Subsonic Wind Tunnel. This is part of an extensive range of wind tunnels available from TecQuipment for teaching aerospace engineering students. The AF1300 Wind Tunnel sits in the middle of the TecQuipment wind tunnels range, is compact enough to be moved around on wheels, and yet has the functionality to allow students to perform experiments to understand the following:

• Investigations into boundary layer development
• Influence of angle of attack on aerofoil performance
• Flow past bluff and streamlined bodies with pressure and velocity observations in the wake
• Performance of an aerofoil with flap, influence of flap angle on lift, drag and stall
• Pressure distribution around a cylinder under sub and super-critical flow conditions
• Study of characteristics of models involving basic measurement of lift and drag forces
• Study of the characteristics of three-dimensional aerofoils involving measurement of lift, drag and pitching moment
• Study of the pressure distribution around an aerofoil model to derive the lift and comparison with direct measurements of lift
• Flow visualisation

Advanced Aerodynamic Theory with Supersonic Studies

For more advanced understandings, the College added an AF300 Intermittent Supersonic Wind Tunnel to their laboratory. At the easier end of advanced theory students can learn about nozzle pressure distribution, analyse Mach numbers and then use the Schleiren apparatus to measure and visualise pressure and shock waves on a model.

TecQuipment offers two supersonic wind tunnel options, the Intermittent and Continuous Supersonic Wind Tunnel. For budget, easy lab set-up and result accuracy reasons, Solihull College opted for the Intermittent Wind Tunnel, which stores compressed air in tanks – in this case a line of three tanks, which induces a flow in the working section of the wind tunnel. This controlled air supply provides a more stable flow of air with filters and air dryers for accurate results that can be captured in a 5-10 second window. Once the experiment has run, the air tanks will refill for 3-5 minutes and then be ready to run an experiment once more.

The Schlieren Apparatus allows students to see density gradients as variations in intensity of illumination, see for themselves supersonic air flow around models, plus shockwaves and expansions. A series of mirrors and lenses allow the student to see the results as they happen, while a digital camera records them for later reference. The recording functionality is particularly useful when sharing the results with a group of students.

Watch the video below for more…