Every winter, I teach a course in Applied Finite Element Analysis at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, California.  The course meets for three lectures and one lab period each week over a ten week quarter.  Most students are undergraduate seniors, although there are always a few MS graduate students.  There are mechanical, aerospace, civil, and biomedical engineers enrolled.  For the first seven weeks, the students work through a series of increasingly complex labs using Abaqus.  Over that same time, they develop a proposal for a final project.  The last three weeks of lab are open for the students to work on their individual projects.   I always learn a lot during the project phase, as every project has its own challenges!  The project wraps up with the students presenting their work with a brief presentation and a formal report.  It is great to view the presentations and reports at the end of the quarter to see how much the students have learned. 

For the winter 2013 quarter, Rene Sprunger of Simulia suggested we showcase their work in a Simulia Learning blog.  To encourage students to share their work, Simulia sponsored a project contest for the class.  The project reports were evaluated and the author of the best report received an iPod Nano as a prize.  Selecting a single winner was very difficult, as you'll see if you read them.  There were many excellent reports, but the winning report was prepared by Tiffany Mitori.  A photo of her receiving the prize will be added soon.

This post provides links to the student project reports from the course this winter, summarized in the table below.  The reports are impressive, in particular since each student started the course ten weeks earlier with no knowledge of the finite element method! 

I've attached a copy of the project instructions, in case anyone else would like to use the same approach.