Report and Reflection following a poster presentation at the 2021 Conference of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education. It was the presentation of a project titled "Contemplative Environments within Engineering Education: A Weaving of Two Auto-Ethnographies" by Olin faculty member Yevgeniya V. Zastavker and student David Freeman.
Today's wind turbines have nearly reached their maximum possible efficiency and are limited to sites with a narrow profile of wind patterns. The patent-pending Mixer Ejector Wind Turbine (MEWT) concept proposed by FloDesign promises to outperform existing wind turbines by a factor of three or more in a much wider range of wind resources. Olin College’s FloDesign SCOPE team was charged with an evaluation of potential drive train configurations for its planned 500 kW- 700 kW production model wind turbine. The first stage of the project involved 5-8 conceptual drive train configurations that were well suited to the unique features of the FloDesign wind turbine. Gallery sketches and documentation of the tradeoffs for each option were provided by the team and used to choose designs for further investigation. The team then tested the best concepts developed earlier through physical bench models. Olin College’s FloDesign SCOPE team was charged with an evaluation of potential drive train configurations for its planned 500 kW- 700 kW production model wind turbine. The first stage of the project involved 5-8 conceptual drive train configurations that were well suited to the unique features of the FloDesign wind turbine. Gallery sketches and documentation of the tradeoffs for each option were provided by the team and used to choose designs for further investigation. The team then tested the best concepts developed earlier through physical bench models.