Riverfront development in Nashville is booming but Middle Tennesseans and tourists lack opportunities to enjoy the river, learn about its ecology, and develop an appreciation for its water quality.
A solution is a Cumberland River floating boardwalk, the brainchild of a team of mechanical engineering students who designed two gathering platforms spanning 1,000 feet with three gangways, benches, fishing stations, a kayak launch, and floating vegetation to offer ecological education. The Cumberland River Compact is the project sponsor.
The team will join Vanderbilt engineering seniors soon to graduate, to demonstrate their readiness to tackle real-world engineering problems by showcasing their projects during the annual School of Engineering Design Day on April 21 from 5-7 p.m. in Featheringill Hall.
Seniors work on teams throughout the year on solutions they create for a wide range of challenging engineering problems for industrial, academic and government clients. Some 57 design projects were selected by seniors in biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical and computer engineering, engineering management, and mechanical engineering. Many of the projects required cross-disciplinary cooperation to include students from different engineering fields.
Some other design projects include
- a full-scale, two-story slide installed in Featheringill Hall
- pedestrian bridge design-build project in Costa Rica
- clinical bedside chair to improve physician-patient interactions
- IEEE 2025 SoutheastCon competition robot
- aerodynamic induction system for a high-performance SAE racecar
- reducing wheelchair mishandling in airports
- wearable finger tracking device for augmented reality integration
- biofeedback posture-monitoring system for surgeons
Design courses provide students with the experience of working on projects that involve design constraints, budgets, reviews and deadlines.
“A real value of senior design projects is the mentorship and support by external advisors—industry representatives, government clients, entrepreneurs, nonprofit mentors, as well as research and clinical faculty,” said Assistant Dean for Design Tom Withrow, professor of the practice of mechanical engineering and a Vanderbilt Immersion Faculty Fellow.
Contact: brenda.ellis@vanderbilt.edu