Development of an undergraduate material science laboratory.

摘要

This paper documents the processes done to upgrade an undergraduate material science laboratory at The Cooper Union. The main themes of the projects include: (1) Increase safety of the laboratory; (2) Lower the cost of ownership of each experiment; (3) Establish a set procedure for how each experiment is run; (4) Expand the scope of the curriculum to form interdisciplinary engineering experiments; Although the objectives are part of all the projects undertaken, the following four projects were chosen as representative of the work done: (1) Charily Impact Test Laboratory Upgrade; (2) Tensile Test Laboratory Upgrade; (3) Laminating Press Repair; (4) Creation of a Piezoelectric Materials Laboratory.; A serendipitous result of the creation of the piezoelectric experiment led to the development of a low-cost method for the measurement of the block force generated by a piezoelectric stack. This method will give field engineers the ability to quickly quality check the force generation of a piezoelectric stack via the strain generated from an electric field.