2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper explores how students in Stanford University’s mechanical engineering capstone course partnered with a local regenerative farm to design an innovative mobile fencing system, using a lateral movement irrigation system (LMS) in an unconventional way, while addressing real-world challenges in engineering design and community collaboration. Student teams in ME 170 explore the needs of users and look to understand the cultural and societal context for their projects, with student outcomes targeted in accordance with ABET requirements for baccalaureate degree programs. The local farm, Pie Ranch, manages a regenerative farm and education center that cultivates health and justice in the food system. As part of its operation, Pie Ranch farms pastured laying chickens, which need consistent access to fresh grass and the food sources it contains, as well as protection from predators. Pie Ranch uses electrified netting fencing to deter predators and contain the chickens as part of a rotational grazing program. This netting must be disassembled and reassembled before the chickens can be moved to a new area of the pasture. The process to uninstall and reinstall fencing is manual and can take several hours each day. The student team was tasked with developing a proof of concept that uses the power of an LMS to deploy a mobile fencing solution for a contained grazing area. The resulting design features a suspended netting system, attached to a cantilevered frame secured to a 135’ LMS irrigation pipe. In this paper, we present a summary of the students’ approach to managing expectations via detailed calculations, modeling, and scaled prototypes for a community partner whose vision included reliance on future infrastructure to be used in a novel and unexpected way.