Fluid Bench Project is a project offered to the students of Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering and is conducted under the tutelage of IMechE NUST Student Chapter. The project is used as a means of scrutinizing the abilities and prowess of sophomores in solving practical and real-life fluid mechanics problems as well as polish the self-learning abilities of students entailing extremely positive outcomes.

The project was conducted with the sponsorship fromKSB Pumpsand School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (SMME), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST). KSB Pumps works in close association with NUST as both envisage production of quality engineers from Pakistan.

该项目是作为本学期的项目进行的for the students of Fluid Mechanics-II course of SMME, NUST. The participants were required to achieve predefined pressure heads at up to 5 out of 8 points on the provided bench. An initial head was provided through a tank installed at the top of the bench. Students had to consider all sorts of losses (major and minor) and advance a possible solution in the form of a pipe network. Students were to demonstrate the working off their pipe network and were called for viva voce, where their learning was appraised. Unique problem statements were designed for all of the 36 participatinggroups.

The event’s preparations were initiated well in time according to a chalked-out timeline. An organizing committee (OC) was formed, and technical work was initiated months before the commencement. The event was headedby Mr. Abdullah Zafarand阿卜杜拉先生是, freshman and sophomore students at SMME, NUST. The OC worked in close collaboration with the technical team. The tasks were well undertaken by the OC. The bench was designed and modified by a dedicated team led byMr. Zeeshan Arshad(junior year student at SMME) and constituting ofMr. Bilal Ghani, Mr. Uzair ShakeelandMr. Muhammad Owais(sophomores at SMME). Once the problem statement was designed, it was forwarded to the students. A seminar was conducted in order to help students fathom the complexities of the problem and form a pertinent thinking approach. The demonstration of the designed piping networks and the corresponding evaluation was carried out over a week’s span in the respective lab session of each group from 29^thApril to 3^rdof May. The demonstration was scrutinized byMr. Mansoor-ud-din Chishti (Faculty SMME)andDr. Muhammad Sajid (Faculty SMME, initiator of Fluid Bench Project)and viva voce was conducted mainly byMr. Chishti. The marking criterion accommodated 2 centimeter tolerance for each head. A report was also collected and assessed byDr. Muhammad Sajid.A total of 36 teams participated in the event.Dr. Emad Uddin(Faculty SMME)andDr. Zaib Ali(Faculty SMME)provided support to the chapter in organizing the project. The project was able to engage around 100 non-IMechE Members and 30 IMechE Members either as audience or as participants.

The event provided the students with a learning opportunity, who were able to take the following from the event:

• Ability to apply their classroom knowledge of Fluid Mechanics, with a specific focus on internal pipe flow, to designing pipe systems to fulfill the pressure head requirements.
• An experience of the scaled down engineering complexities associated with designing piping networks for cities.
• Correlating theoretical work with a final practical design.

The students provided a positive feedback to the chapter which encouraged IMechE NUST Student Chapter to continue organizing such projects and competitions in the future.

Written by:Muhammad Arsal Rehman (SMME, NUST)