BE 460WBiological Engineering Design I

2 credits · Biological Engineering · Penn State

BE 460W is part one of a two course sequence that provides a culminating design experience for students in the Biological Engineering major. Students will develop skills and techniques for managing and executing engineering design projects in the following fields: agricultural engineering, food and biological processing engineering, and/or natural resource engineering. Projects are sponsored by faculty, industry, or community initiatives and are structured to span two semesters. In the Fall semester, the emphasis is on classroom lectures, preliminary analyses, and project proposal development. In the Spring semester, the emphasis is on hands-on laboratory activities, project execution, and report preparation. Project teams perform all facets of the design process. This includes problem identification, planning of the project, formulation of design specifications, development and evaluation of alternative conceptual designs, development of detailed designs, consideration of safety and design optimization, design implementation, design testing, and analysis and documentation of results. Students improve their writing skills through preparation and refinement of various documents including a design notebook, proposal, statement of work, design specification report, status reports, and a final report. Students also present their results in other formats, including poster and oral presentations for both technical and non-technical audiences.