The final Lab exercise in ME338 was a student designed lab. Group members designed an experiment, wrote a proposal, and had the proposal approved by the instructor.

The experiment selected investigated the heat loss in a copper pipe, the pipe was tested bare, with foam insulation, and foam insulation with an aluminized mylar wrap. To summarize concisely, the foam insulated and mylar wrapped insulation was the best, taking about 104% longer to cool than the bare pipe, and the foam insulted pipe took about 52% longer to cool than the bare copper pipe. From this data is it reasonable to conclude that when a high thermal insulation is desired a radiative insulation should be included as well.

The full report can be viewed as a Microsoft Word(.docx) file here: http://colorado4wheel.com/images/portfolio/final_lab11.docx

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