2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Increased exposure to engineering design projects during undergraduate engineering education gained attraction over the past years. In addition to capstone senior design course offerings, Biomedical Engineering programs increasingly incorporate standalone engineering design courses into the curriculum as early as freshman class. These promising attempts emphasize the importance of reinforcing engineering design practice however it is still a challenge to accommodate engineering design projects into field-specific courses. Tissue Engineering is a multidisciplinary field that synergizes biomaterials, cells, and bioreactors to recreate damaged or missing tissues. Bioreactor design in the tissue engineering course curriculum is taught primarily by introducing the existing studies to the students and discussing the reported outcomes of the design already published by researchers. Due to the significant time and specialized infrastructures (due to sterile and complicated instrumentations used in Tissue Engineering) needed to model, build, and test the tissue engineering bioreactors, integrating a design component into a Tissue Engineering course is a difficult task. In this study, we developed a five-week Tissue Engineering Bioreactor Design and Development Project enabling students to follow all stages of the engineering design process (identification of the problem, prototype development, testing design, design optimization, and sharing the solution). Teams of 4 students were presented with a case scenario where they were expected to develop a "Scleraxis Tendon Tissue Engineering Bioreactor (TTEB)" with the design criteria specified as autoclavable, mammalian tissue culture compatible TTBE with an ability to apply at least 50% cyclic stretch on enclosed cell-seeded biomaterial scaffolds. After acquiring a discretionary budget available upon initial prototype presentation, teams fabricated TTEBs and evaluated their designs. In order to overcome the time limitations associated with the iterative nature of the prototype optimization step, we incorporated LEGO® bricks for the initial prototype development step followed by the actualization of the final prototype utilizing Makerspace tools (3D printers and laser cutter) and testing their final design. The five-week activity started by an introductory lecture on the "Engineering Design Process", "Rules on keeping an engineers notebook" and "Introduction on the five week project". On week 2, the case study was introduced followed by developing a LEGO® prototype by utilizing potential solutions, determining the dimensions and maker space tools required, lists of materials and potential price range to fit within the budget. On week 3 each group presented the potential design solution, with a product development timeline and parts list and potential budget to the judges. Week 4 and 5 consisted of independent activity of each team towards developing and testing the final prototype and presenting the final design to the judges. Following the project presentations, students submitted the engineering notebooks alongside with answering the post-activity surveys. From the activity, it is expected that students both experience about important aspects of engineering design and also apply engineering design strategies to develop tissue engineering bioreactors. The activity may also give students the opportunity improve their understanding of the Hooke’s law and its applications to tendon bioreactor design.