Design And Construction Of In Situ Moisture Sensors For A Solid Waste Landfill

Undergraduate students at the Mercer University School of Engineering (MUSE) were employed to work on a cooperative project with graduate students at the University of Central Florida (UCF) to design a moisture sensor which could survive in the landfill environment and produce reliable data. Students from the mechanical, industrial, biomedical, and environmental engineering programs at MUSE worked under the close supervision of a professor in the environmental engineering program at MUSE to design and construct prototype sensors. Graduate students at UCF evaluated these sensors. As the evaluation process was performed, recommendations were made and the sensor design was modified. Once the sensor design was finalized, undergraduate engineering students at MUSE were hired to construct sensors for installation in a bioreactor landfill in Florida. Approximately 180 sensors were produced over a six-week time period. Roughly two dozen students were employed by the project during this time period. In addition to physically constructing the sensors, students helped to define the assembly process, design templates and tools to help with the assembly process, and modify the basic sensor design for ease of assembly without compromising function. This paper will present the theory behind the sensor design, a chronology of the sensor design process, and the sensor assembly process. Finally, working with and motivating undergraduate students is much more challenging than working with graduate students. Lessons learned from this project and suggestions for managing undergraduate researchers will be presented.