Teaching Smart Materials To Engineering Undergraduate Students: A Problem Solving Approach

This paper describes a problem solving approach for teaching the subject of smart materials to Mechanical Engineering undergraduate students. An experiment with a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuated robotic arm is designed for the senior undergraduate laboratory (ME4006) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. ME4006 is designed to provide the students with experience in experimental investigation of mechanical engineering systems. In designing the SMAactuated robot experiment it was intended for the students to have a hands-on experiment with Shape Memory Alloys. Furthermore, students learn about sensing and actuation advantages of the SMAs along with their control problems and limitations. The problem is described in a memorandum to the students from a supervisor, who defines the purpose of the problem and defines the audience for the report. Students are not given a procedure to follow for conducting the experiment. In the lab, they design the experiment procedure based on their engineering judgments. Students are introduced to this problem by two lectures which are followed by two sessions of lab time. After performing the experiment the students, working in teams of five, present their results to an audience of faculty, graduate teaching assistants, and two other student teams.