Abstract:

This work is part of a Project of Innovation and Educational Enhancement for Aerospace Engineering (Bachelor and Master Degrees in the School of Design Engineering of Polytechnic University of Valencia). These studies are only 10 years old and, in these initial stages, a solid and long-term docent project should be consolidated. The objective is to guarantee a good training and learning process both in specific and transversal skills in order to the best professional competence of our students. To this end, we have formed a group of professors convinced of the benefits of using real experiences to the development of certain transversal skills.

One of the buildings of the School of Design Engineering is the Hangar “Pedro Duque”. Inside, we have different aeronautical structures: a helicopter BO-105, a fighter plane Mirage F1, both given by the Spanish Air Forces, for teaching purposes. Additionally we have several wing structures and blades.

Under this context, we propose in this work several experiences using these real structures framed within the following subjects
- (Subject 1) Flight Loads. Static and Dynamic Tests in Aircrafts (Master Degree)
- (Subject 2) Aeroelasticity and Computational Aerodynamics (Master Degree).
- (Subject 3) Aircraft Structures (Bachelor Degree).

The practices, based on static and dynamic experimental test on available structures, are organized in three stages:
(1) Setup and design of the experiment,
(2) Data acquisition,
(3) Interpretation of results and reporting.

Different transversal skills will be come into play: In the initial part of the experiments, students should be able to design and project the setup of the experiment, something that can be included for getting the skills related to “design and project”. In the second stage students can work the skill “specific instrumentation”, related to the ability to use techniques and tools necessary for the practice of the profession. In the third stage, students must read the experimental results and be able to predict them from the physical principles studied during the theoretical sessions. We propose also different assessment forms according to a continuous process of skills acquisition. At the end of the experimental activities, students must present a technical report describing the process (where the transversal skill “effective communication” is important and can be checked). Additionally, within the regular sessions self-assessment acts will be proposed.

Keywords:

Transversal skills, practical experiences, higher education, aerospace engineering.