A two-semester senior design project course (ME 755-756 or TECH 797) must be completed by the end of the senior year by all undergraduates who are planning to receive their bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering. The purpose of this requirement is to allow every ME graduate to gain experience in a substantial design or experimental research project.

Tidal Energy Project

The Tidal Energy Infrastructure & Instrumentation teams conducted a first successful tow test of a half-size Gorlov Helical Turbinemounted on UNH's tidal energy test platform. The test platform and various systems for performance evaluation and data acquisition were designed and built by students over the past three semesters.

North Atlantic Right Whale Mandible Mechanics

The North Atlantic Right Whale is an endangered species whose fate is contingent on its interaction with humans. In particular, humans sailing on the seas in large vessels are the culprits. Apparently neither the NARW nor the ship has the ability to avoid an impending collision when both are moving at their typical speeds. There are a number of events where the collision happens with the ship striking the mandible of the NARW causing damage to the whale and on many occasions the demise of the whale.

There is a pending project to investigate the mechanical behavior of the NARW mandible. Mandibles harvested during necropsies of recovered whales will be available for testing. Yes, the real bones, full size will be available. The bones will be placed in the loading frames available in the Civil Engineering Labs in Morse Hall. The goal of this project is to design, fabricate and validate a method for securing the mandible in the loading frame in a manner that emulates the actual jaw.

The NARW jaw has two mandibles, and three joints. Each mandible has a 'pivoting joint' much like the human jaw. The third joint is where the two mandibles come together to form the arc of the jaw. The devices necessary to hold the mandible in place must emulate these joints so the measured load-deformation characteristics of the mandible reflect the in-place behavior.

North Atlantic Right Whale Model Testing for Entanglement

One of the contributing factors to the present status of the North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) is the entanglement of whales in fishing gear. More often it is the entanglement in the vertical lines marking the bottom mounted fishing gear. There is much conjecture about how a whale becomes entangled, but it is all the best perspective from observing entangled whales. The goal of this project is to investigate the behavior of a NARW by developing a scale model, testing scenario, which will enable some of this conjecture to be observed and validated.

This project needs a 1/10 to 1/15 scale model of a NARW, and a scale model of the fishing gear for testing purposes. These models will be deployed in the tow tank in the Chase Lab. The whale model will need to be rotated about its longitudinal axis, as a spinning behavior is anticipated once a whale encounters a vertical line. The whale model will also need to have moveable jaw and flippers, as these two components are critical in the potential entanglement scenarios. It is anticipated that a variety of tow tests will be made and documented on video.