Helping Young Engineers Design Their Own Future
MEMS senior design students sharpen their problem solving skills and their industry preparedness.
Senior Design
The mechanical engineering curriculum immerses our students in hands-on learning via projects throughout their degree, culminating in the hallmark senior design experience. Students apply the department’s humanistic approach to engineering problem solving as they identify, formulate, and address problems whose solutions have the potential for societal impact within economic, safety, reliability, and ethical constraints.
Example Projects
Automatic Radio Frequency Transcription and Translation at the Edge (ARFTT)
82nd Airborne Division
Design a portable system used by soldiers during battlefield operations that automatically picks up radio transmissions, transcribes them to text, and if necessary, translates the text to English in real time. This includes radio signal interception, message transcription and translation, use of software defined radio, and a physical display of messages.
Autonomous Water Sampling Payload for a Water-based UAV
Duke Marine Lab
Design an autonomous water sampling device that is capable of sampling water from multiple locations in a single mission without compromising the sterility of the samples, to test these samples for pollutants and hazardous materials.
Item Orientation Workcell in Amazon Fulfillment Centers
Amazon
Design a mechanical device to adjust the orientation of a diverse range of items in the XY plane efficiently, at a low cost, and without damage, akin to a person manually straightening items on a conveyor belt in Amazon Fulfillment Centers.
Submersible SPO2 Monitor
Garmin
Design a submersible blood oxygen measurement device for SCUBA divers that functions at up to 60 psi for at least an hour (water depth of over 40 meters), with readings ±6% of commercial SPO2 sensors while dry or submerged.
Mars Propulsion Design
Robert Hickman
Develop a proof-of-concept rocket engine validating the client’s electric resistance thermal propulsion (ERTP) design with an ISP greater than 150 s and thrust greater than 7 N, with the goal of finding a more efficient in-space propulsion system suitable for a mission to Mars.
Modular Assembling Robot System
Dr. Boyuan Chen
Design a robotic system with increased generalizability, to be able to adapt to a wide variety of tasks. The system should consist of individual components that move autonomously, connect, reconnect, and move as a combined robot at a useful speed.
Kinetic Sculpture Race
Dr. Sophia Santillan
Design a themed sculpture that also acts as a human-powered vehicle that can cross 15 miles of road, mud, sand, and water. The kinetic sculpture participated in the annual East Coast Kinetic Sculpture Race hosted by the American Visionary Arts Museum (AVAM) in Baltimore, MD.
Experience Details
Projects are sourced from:
- industry partners and sponsors
- research labs on campus
- student and faculty interest
These team-based projects corroborate our students’ technical and professional skills developed throughout the curriculum through design analysis, prototyping, technical communication, and project management.
Skills mastery is assessed through an industry lens, where industry partners are a critical element of the learning process during the six-month projects.
The Mechanical Engineering Senior Design experience emphasizes the following skills:
- written communication
- oral communication
- engineering ethics
- project planning and scheduling
- decision-making
- team building and dynamics
- engineering economics
- developing/writing functional specifications
- safety in product design
- leadership
- standards and regulations
- drawings/creativity/concept generation
- analysis tools
- intellectual property/patents
- prototyping and testing
- optimization
- sustainability
- manufacturing processes
- risk assessment
- CAD design and layout
- product liability and quality assurance
Industry Sponsorship
Often students will work with industrial partners in a collaborative research environment. As they tackle real-world engineering projects, the engineering students and their industry sponsors are afforded unlimited possibilities for learning and achievement.
Industry partners benefit by:
- the opportunity to initiate elective research projects
- collaboration with Duke research faculty
- the design, analysis, testing and creative talent of students
- the creation of innovative and competitive products
- the development of improved manufacturing or business processes
- the opportunity to see students at work and recruit seniors
- networking at the end-of-semester presentations and competition
Undergraduate Contacts
Nico Hotz
MEMS Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Professor of the Practice
Sophia Santillan
Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Professor of the Practice in the Thomas Lord Department of MEMS
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Undergrads Go the Distance to Design for Garmin
Neal Simmons’ mechanical engineering senior design students encountered unexpected terrain to complete projects for Garmin smartwatches this semester.