Peter Eric Johnson

Valparaiso University (USA) · Department of Mechanical Engineering

A Capstone C30 MicroTurbine has been installed, instrumented, and utilized in a junior-level laboratory course at Valparaiso University. The C30 MicroTurbine experiment enables Valparaiso University to educate students interested in power generation and turbine technology. The first goal of this experiment is for students to explore a gas turbine g...

Computational fluid dynamics is not often used early in the conceptual design stage of product development due to the lengthy computation times involved with solving complex computational fluid dynamics models. At this early stage, design options are being explored and significant changes are common, and therefore updated solutions must be found qu...

This article describes seven laboratory experiments that have been developed for the automatic controls course at Valparaiso University. It also presents the results of a self-assessment survey taken by the students after they had done these laboratory experiments. Automatic controls recently became a required course for all undergraduate mechanica...

It has been well documented that international service-learning design projects in engineering provide many educational benefits to the students involved in these projects. This article addresses the question of whether or not the benefits gained from international service-learning design projects extend to those students who are not directly invol...

GE 301- Principles of Engineering Practice is a required course for Valparaiso University College of Engineering students. The course was revamped in Spring 2005 to better emphasize engineering aspects of ethics, economics, sustainability, and sociopolitical issues. As part of teaching ethics, students have traditionally been assigned an individual...

Abstract—All seniors in computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering at __________ University take a multidisciplinary senior design course. In the first week of the Fall semester, students are assigned to teams (based on their ranked preference), and each team is then given a project that contains both electrical and mechanical aspects. Some p...

In the Fall of 2005, a team of five engineering seniors was assigned a multidisciplinary senior project in which they were to design and build a power generation system for a small village on Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua. The power generated was to be used for lights in a small clinic and a classroom, a refrigerator for vaccines, and an emergen...

The work presented in this paper focuses on our mechanics-statics course. When solving 3D free-body diagram problems, students often have difficulty in interpreting the spatial layout of structures when problems are presented on the written page or on a chalkboard/whiteboard. Our method projects free-body diagrams on a 3D display where they can be...

Work done to study subjects in a statics class taught at Valparaiso University as to the development of the ability of students to visualize in 3D was discussed. Four different media were explored, from paper-and-pencil to a fully immersive virtual reality experience. Wide-ranging data in the course was collected and its analysis was presented. A f...

Engineering problems are typically solved by direct solution. For the direct solution of engineering problems the boundary conditions and physical properties of the domain are given, and the dependent variable is calculated throughout the domain. In contrast to this, for inverse engineering problems the dependent variable is known at select locatio...

This dissertation presents AMoEBA, the Adaptive Modeling by Evolving Blocks Algorithm. AMoEBA is an evolutionary technique for automatic decomposition of data fields and solver/descriptor placement. By automatically decomposing a numerical data set, the algorithm is able to solve a variety of problems that are difficult to solve with other techniqu...

Interpolation, compression, or even use of a large data set is enhanced if the data set can be partitioned into sub-sets with a more uniform internal character. This paper presents a technique for more rapid automatic segregation of data sets with an evolutionary algorithm. We improve performance of our evolutionary algorithm by imposing a graphica...

The VRFurnace is a unique VR application designed to analyze a complete coal-combustion CFD model of a power plant furnace. Although other applications have been created that analyze furnace performance, no other has included the added complications of particle tracking and the reactions associated with coal combustion. Currently the VRFurnace is a...

Abstract GE 301- Principles of Engineering Practice is a required course for Valparaiso University College of Engineering students. The course was revamped,in Spring 2005 to better emphasize engineering aspects of ethics, economics, sustainability, and sociopolitical issues. As part of teaching ethics, students have traditionally been assigned an i...

0 ABSTRACT Most of today's educators have been taught by the conventional two-dimensional technology known as the chalkboard. It has been the default teaching medium and is still used effectively by many in the engineering field as the preferred means of conveying information to students. However, one great inherent problem is its difficulty in con...