Part of the book: Advances in Modeling of Fluid Dynamics
This chapter reports some effects of project-based learning (PBL) on development of social skills on Industrial Engineering freshmen (first-year) students. PBL is an active learning and student-centered methodology that promotes skills development such as the 4C—Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity. These skills should be an integral part of the expected engineering competences needed for professional proficiency, in order to comply with a changeable world and instable marketplaces, which require competences well beyond the technical ones. Through a survey to the first-year students and interviews to recently graduated professionals, some interesting results about the effects of PBL on social skills development were acquired. Some of these results relate to the recognition of acquiring competences during the project development and the usefulness and applicability of these in their daily professional activity. Among others, these encompass the capability to lead projects and produce effective work within multidisciplinary teams, to deal with conflicts, and to provide effective oral and written communication and capability to adapt to different work environments and assuming responsibilities, reflecting and assessing the own learning and the work of others, and to respect the attitudes and work of others.
Part of the book: Human Capital and Competences in Project Management
Cardiovascular diseases are amongst the main causes of death worldwide, and the main underlying pathological process is atherosclerosis. Over the years, fatty materials are accumulated in the arterial which consequently hinders the blood flow. Due to the great mortality rate of this disease, hemodynamic studies within stenotic arteries have been of great clinical interest, and computational methods have played an important role. Commonly, computational fluid dynamics methods, where only the blood flow behavior is considered, however, the study of both blood and artery walls’ interaction is of foremost importance. In this regard, in the present study, both computational fluid dynamics and fluid-structure interaction modeling analysis were performed in order to evaluate if the arterial wall compliance affects considerably the hemodynamic results obtained in idealized stenotic coronary models. From the overall results, it was observed that the influence of wall compliance was noteworthy on wall shear stress distribution, but its effect on the time-averaged wall shear stress and on the oscillatory shear index was minor.
Part of the book: Applications of Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation and Modeling