Engineering Problem Solving Design Project:Emergency/Homeless Shelter Design

摘要

The Emergency/Homeless Shelter Design Project was developed for “Engineering ProblemSolving I”, a freshman engineering course, based on an exercise presented in Engineering YourFuture: A Project-Based Introduction to Engineering. The purpose of the project is to encouragestudents to apply their design skills to serve society. Students are challenged to design acardboard structure to keep people warm in cold weather, which will be warmed with sunlightand body heat. Classroom activities that help the teams in studying the issues of housing designinclude a guest lecture by the CEO of PEER Consultants, P.C. (an international civil andenvironmental engineering consultancy), brainstorming sessions to generate ideas for the design,a virtual building assignment using Energy-10 software to evaluate the energy efficiency of avariety of building materials, and lectures on oral and written communications of technicalmaterial. Teams of four first-year students write a proposal for the design of a low-cost shelterand then build and test a prototype of the structure using a basic kit provided to them. Thedesigns are demonstrated during the final week of classes in a poster session where students,faculty and staff are invited to view the shelters and technical posters describing the designs andtesting results.