Dear Students,

Please find below our comments on the nature of each of the questions in the
final examination paper of ME3122and your performance on the questions.
Question 1 tests the ability of the student to apply the law of Radiation to
diffuse-gray surfaces and radiation shield in cylindrical shape with internal
heat generation. It is an adaptation of a few examples given in the notes.
About 58% of the class passed but only 17% of the class did this question
well. It seems many were unable to use the correct approach at the
beginning of the question and that affected the subsequent calculations.
Question 2 tests the ability of the student to design a two-shell pass four-tube
pass heat exchanger. This question is rather straightforward and only a basic
knowledge of heat exchanger analysis using either the log mean temperature
difference method or the effectiveness-NTU method was required. More than
80% of the class did very well. Yet a minority of students had difficulty in
computing the temperature difference parameters and hence were unable to
obtain the correct values of the logarithmic mean temperature difference and
hence the heat exchanger area required.
Question 3 tests the ability of the student to determine the heat transfer from
air flowing across a bank of tubes, 10 rows deep in the direction of flow.
Questions similar to this have never been asked before and this has caused
many students to stumble. Only 16% of the class did this question very well,
about 37% managed to just scrape through while 35% of the class failed. To
obtain the correct correlation to use for solving this problem, the maximum
velocity of the fluid through the tube banks is required. Many students do not
seem to be able to calculate this. Some students also neglected the
correction factor to be applied when the number of tubes is less than 20 deep
along the flow direction.
Question 4 tests the ability of the student to apply the Fouriers law of
Conduction to a plane composite wall acting as a fin with internal heat
generation. This is a question which test a combination of a few topics
covered in the lectures. About 65% of the class passed this question and
about 32% of the class did this question well. Most were able to apply the
thermal circuit and fin concepts taught to solve at least part of the question.