MAE 4121

Community Wind Energy Research

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

This is a project based design course. Students will be instructed in the tools and techniques used in planning and developing wind farms and then will work in teams building their own projects focused on an aspect of data collection (atmospheric, environmental, acoustic, wind turbine) and/or analysis at a local wind farm or wind energy facility. Projects can include developing and deploying new sensors, modeling and data comparison, deploying existing instrumentation in a new configuration or for a particular campaign. The projects must be of utility to the wind farm and /or the surrounding community. All students engage in a 2-4 person wind farm design project.  In addition, MAE 4121 students undertake this project with the reporting expectations of a senior-design project. This course fulfills the M.E. senior design requirement; it must have a significant mechanical engineering design component.

When Offered Spring.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisite: MAE 4020/MAE 4021/MAE 5020 or EAS 2500 or permission of instructor.

• Understand scientific/engineering /environmental issues in developing/operating a wind farm.
• Understand the fundamentals of operation and deployment of atmospheric, acoustic and environmental measurements.
• Demonstrate an ability to select and use the techniques and engineering tools necessary to design a project to address their research goals.
• Be able to analyze and present their data as a technical report describing their project and make clear and effective technical presentations and to scientific and general audiences.

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