As part of the continuous efforts in developing industry partnerships that will lead to priority consideration of graduates from The School of Technology ArcelorMittal, the world's leading steel company with operations in more than 60 countries, collaborated with The Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) Program at Michigan Tech to engage a group of EET students in solving engineering problems as part of capstone integrating experience and to fulfill the degree program requirements. ArcelorMittal utilizes railroad system to ship metal coils through different climate zones of the United States. Due to significant temperature and humidity fluctuations during transportation, the coils are subject to corrosion. To understand the severity of climate conditions, have an ability to characterize them geographically, and to fully evaluate the cause and the strength of the corrosion, the data containing the information on the humidity, temperature and associated GPS location must be collected. Further evaluation of this data will allow the company to take the preventive actions for protecting the shipped materials. To design and build a "black box" capable of collecting all the required data, a Senior Design team of 2 students was formed in the Electrical Engineering Technology program in the School of Technology at Michigan Tech. Working with the sponsor the project significance was identified as the development and proof of concept demonstration of the multi-sensor device enabling the atmospheric and GPS data collection for the materials shipped through different climate zones of the United States. The benefits are significant - the availability of these data allows the company to analyze the atmospheric conditions along the shipping route, register harsh zones with high humidity and extreme temperatures - the conditions that severely affect the corrosion process. The GPS data provides the information on the location as well as the duration on various, including undesired, climate conditions. These valuable data will be used to analyze atmospheric conditions along each route and further pre-treat the shipped materials in order to protect them from the corrosion. Additionally, the project provides an excellent opportunity for EET students to apply their skills and course work, and interact with industry on a real-world design challenge. In this article, we describe an effective approach of working in industry sponsored SD project, the SD team requirements, the significance of the project, specific project outcomes, and assessment tools used.
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