Nondestructive Evaluation of Aircraft Skin: Product Design and Development in the Sophomore Engineering Clinic Shreekanth A. Mandayam, Anthony J. Marchese and John L. Schmalzel College of Engineering Rowan University 201 Mullica Hill Road Glassboro, NJ 08028 Abstract – The four engineering departments (Electrical, Mechanical, Chemical and Civil) at Rowan University rely extensively on semester-long project modules called “Clinics” to provide practical applications for coursework taught within the respective departments. The engineering clinics are typically team-taught by faculty from more than one discipline; the student project teams are also multidisciplinary. The focus is on product design and development; students and faculty bring skills acquired from their respective disciplines to bear on the design process. This paper describes a Sophomore level clinic experience wherein students and faculty from the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering departments collaborated to design and develop a portable device that could be used to nondestructively inspect aircraft skin for cracks. Introduction In 1992, local industrialist Henry M. Rowan made a generous donation of $100 million to the then Glassboro State College to establish a high-quality engineering school in southern New Jersey. This gift has enabled the university to create one of the most innovative and forward-looking engineering programs in the country. In 1996, the inaugural class of engineering students entered Rowan University and immediately verified the need for a quality undergraduate engineering school in the quickly growing region of southern New Jersey. The inaugural class of 101 students is academically exceptional (avg. SAT score of 1274; avg. class rank of top 12%) and populated predominantly by students from within the region. The College of Engineering at Rowan University is composed of four departments: Chemical Engineering; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Mechanical Engineering. Each department has been designed to serve 25 to 30 students per year, resulting in 100 to 120 students per year in the College of Engineering. The size of the college has been optimized such that it is large enough to provide specialization in separate and credible departments, yet small enough to permit the creation of a truly multidisciplinary curriculum in which laboratory /design courses are offered simultaneously to all engineering students in all four disciplines. Indeed, the hallmark of the engineering program at Rowan University is the interdisciplinary, project-oriented Engineering Clinic sequence. The Engineering Clinic The Engineering Clinic is a course that is taken each semester by every engineering student at Rowan University. In the Engineering Clinic, which is based on the medical school model, students and faculty from all four engineering departments work side-by-side on laboratory experiments, design projects and research. The solution of these real-world problems require not only a proficiency in the technical principles and a mastery of written and oral communication skills and the ability to work as part of an multidisciplinary team [1,2]. Table 1 contains an overview of course content in the 8-semester engineering clinic sequence. As shown in the table, while each clinic course has a specific theme, the underlying concept of engineering design pervades throughout [3]. Table 1. Overview of course content in the 8-semester Engineering Clinic sequence. Year Clinic Theme (Fall) Clinic Theme (Spring) Frosh Engineering Measurements Competitive Assessment Laboratory Soph Discipline Specific Design Interdisciplinary Design Project Junior Product Development Process Development Senior Interdisciplinary Capstone Design Project This 4-year, 20-24 credit design sequence offers students the opportunity to incrementally learn the science and art of design by continuously applying the technical skills they have obtained in traditional coursework. As described in this paper, by applying this just-in-time approach to engineering design education it is possible for students to complete ambitious design projects as early as the sophomore year. In the Spring 1998 semester, sophomore engineering students from each of the four departments worked on interdisciplinary semester-long design projects which included landfill design, assistive technology for the disabled, and the design and development of a non- destructive aircraft inspection device. Each of these projects