Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Effects On Strength And Corrosive Characteristics Of Hardened Cement Paste Using Rice Husk And Sugarcane Bagasse, Travis D. Garrett

Master's Theses

Cement is one of the most used building materials in the world. The production of ordinary Portland cement contributes to the release of harmful greenhouse gasses. In an effort to reduce these emissions, different materials are being evaluated for their use as partial replacements for ordinary Portland cement. Rice husk and sugarcane bagasse are agricultural waste products and large amounts of these are currently landfilled, making them inexpensive and available. When combusted at high temperatures they form rice husk ash and sugarcane bagasse ash that have pozzolanic characteristics. The high silicon dioxide in these products makes them good options to ...

Electrathon Vehicle: Front Suspension, Christopher Clark

All Undergraduate Projects

Central Washington University does not currently have a competition field-able Electrathon America electric vehicle with adequate front suspension. The aim of this project was to provide the vehicle with handling that supports sound ground contact throughout the competition environment. Handling that supports sound ground contact is important for vehicles so they can go around corners without a loss of traction or flipping over. The solution to this engineering problem was designed and tested through various requirements. The requirements at hand were that the suspension components weigh less than 50 pounds, that there be no more than 3 inches of suspension ...

Electrathon Vehicle: Steering, Lathan Halaapiapi

All Undergraduate Projects

The Electrathon Vehicle project is an ongoing project that dates back to 2012. The Electrathon Vehicle began as a frame and three wheels when given to the EV club. In past projects the vehicle has had frame and suspension work. The current design is only partially assembled and does not allow for any steering in the vehicle. A steering system needed to be developed in order for the vehicle to be controlled while a person is sitting in the seat. A steering system was designed that could withstand the force of maneuvering the vehicle in excess of 30 mph. This ...

Prosthetic Hand: Structure, Riley Smith, Riley Smith

All Undergraduate Projects

The objective of this project was to design the structure of a prosthetic hand that has articulating fingers and thumb in order to grip various objects. A design was developed that can add to the available options of prosthetics on the market.

In order to create a base hand for the project, the hand was modeled off of rough human hand dimensions. Analyses determined the feasible size of components. Once a base size was found the movement system in both grip and return form were developed and refined. With the parts being modeled in Solidworks and 3D printed, iterations of ...

Rapid Prediction Of Low-Boom And Aerodynamic Performance Of Supersonic Transport Aircraft Using Panel Methods, Ted N. Giblette

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Utah State University Aerolab developed and tested a set of tools for rapid prediction of the loudness of a sonic boom generated by supersonic transport aircraft. This work supported a larger effort led by Texas A&M to investigate the use of adaptive aerostructures in lowering sonic boom loudness at off design conditions. Successful completion of this effort will improve the feasibility of supersonic commercial transport over land.

Funding was provided by a NASA University Leadership Initiative grant to several universities, including Utah State University, as well as industry partners to complete this work over a five year period ...

Second-Harmonic Optical Vortex Conversion From Ws₂ Monolayer, Arindam Dasgupta, Jie Gao, Xiaodong Yang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Wavelength, polarization and orbital angular momentum of light are important degrees of freedom for processing and encoding information in optical communication. Over the years, the generation and conversion of orbital angular momentum in nonlinear optical media has found many novel applications in the context of optical communication and quantum information processing. With that hindsight, here orbital angular momentum conversion of optical vortices through second-harmonic generation from only one atomically thin WS2 monolayer is demonstrated at room temperature. Moreover, it is shown that the valley-contrasting physics associated with the nonlinear optical selection rule in WS2 monolayer precisely determines the output circular ...

Pore Elimination Mechanisms During 3d Printing Of Metals, S. Mohammad H. Hojjatzadeh, Niranjan D. Parab, Wentao Yan, Lianyi Chen, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is a 3D printing technology that can print metal parts with complex geometries without the design constraints of traditional manufacturing routes. However, the parts printed by LPBF normally contain many more pores than those made by conventional methods, which severely deteriorates their properties. Here, by combining in-situ high-speed high-resolution synchrotron x-ray imaging experiments and multi-physics modeling, we unveil the dynamics and mechanisms of pore motion and elimination in the LPBF process. We find that the high thermocapillary force, induced by the high temperature gradient in the laser interaction region, can rapidly eliminate pores from the ...

Spatial Variation Of Vector Vortex Beams With Plasmonic Metasurfaces, Yuchao Zhang, Jie Gao, Xiaodong Yang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The spatial variation of vector vortex beams with arbitrary polarization states and orbital angular momentum (OAM) values along the beam propagation is demonstrated by using plasmonic metasurfaces with the initial geometric phase profiles determined from the caustic theory. The vector vortex beam is produced by the superposition of deflected right- and left-handed circularly polarized component vortices with different helical phase charges, which are simultaneously generated off-axially by the single metasurface. Besides, the detailed evolution processes of intensity profile, polarization distribution and OAM value along the beam propagation distance is analyzed. The demonstrated arbitrary space-variant vector vortex beam will pave the ...

Spontaneous Emission Rate Enhancement With Aperiodic Thue-Morse Multilayer, Ling Li, Cherian J. Mathai, Shubhra Gangopadhyay, Xiaodong Yang, Jie Gao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The emergence of multilayer metamaterials in the research field of enhancing spontaneous emission rates has recently received extensive attention. Previous research efforts mostly focus on periodic metal-dielectric multilayers in hyperbolic dispersion region; however, the influence of lattice order in subwavelength multilayers on spontaneous emission is rarely studied. Here, we observe the stronger Purcell enhancement of quantum dots coupled to the aperiodic metal-dielectric multilayer with Thue-Morse lattice order from elliptical to hyperbolic dispersion regions, compared to the periodic multilayer with the same metal filling ratio. This work demonstrates the potential of utilizing quasiperiodic metamaterial nanostructures to engineer the local density of ...

3d Janus Plasmonic Helical Nanoapertures For Polarization-Encrypted Data Storage, Yang Chen, Xiaodong Yang, Jie Gao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Helical structures have attracted considerable attention due to their inherent optical chirality. Here, we report a unique type of 3D Janus plasmonic helical nanoaperture with direction-controlled polarization sensitivity, which is simply fabricated via the one-step grayscale focused ion beam milling method. Circular dichroism in transmission of as large as 0.72 is experimentally realized in the forward direction due to the spin-dependent mode coupling process inside the helical nanoaperture. However, in the backward direction, the nanoaperture acquires giant linear dichroism in transmission of up to 0.87. By encoding the Janus metasurface with the two nanoaperture enantiomers having specified rotation ...

Orbital Angular Momentum Transformation Of Optical Vortex With Aluminum Metasurfaces, Yuchao Zhang, Xiaodong Yang, Jie Gao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) transformation of optical vortex is realized upon using aluminum metasurfaces with phase distributions derived from the caustic theory. The generated OAM transformation beam has the well-defined Bessel-like patterns with multiple designed topological charges from -1 to +2.5 including both the integer-order and fractional-order optical vortices along the propagation. The detailed OAM transformation process is observed in terms of the variations of both beam intensity and phase profiles. The dynamic distributions of OAM mode density in the transformation are further analyzed to illustrate the conservation of the total OAM. The demonstration of transforming OAM states ...

Computational Finite Element Analysis Of Adaptive Gas Turbine Stator-Rotor Flow Interactions For Future Vertical Lift Propulsion, Nikita Kozak, Luis Bravo, Muthuvel Murugan, Anindya Ghoshal, Yu Yu Khine, Yuri Bazilevs, Ming-Chen Hsu

Ming-Chen Hsu

The objective of this work is to computationally investigate the impact of an incident-tolerant rotor blade concept on gas-turbine engine performance under off-design conditions. Currently, gas-turbine engines are designed to operate at a single condition with nearly fixed rotor speeds. Operation at off-design conditions, such as during hover flight or during takeoff, causes the turbine blade flow to excessively separate introducing performance degradations, excessive noise, and critical loss of operability. To address these issues, the benefits of using an incidence-tolerant rotor blade concept is explored based on a novel concept that articulates the rotating turbine blade synchronously with the stator ...

Deformation Of Multifunctional Materials At Various Time And Length Scales: A Dic-Based Study, Behrad Koohbor

Behrad Koohbor

The focus in the present work is to explore and characterize the underlying deformation and failure mechanisms in multifunctional materials including woven composites and polymeric foams, using full-field measurements. Attention has been especially drawn towards the challenges associated with characterizing these materials at extreme length and time scales, and investigating the advantages of full-field measurements to resolve the existing limitations. Accordingly, the current limitations in the study of dynamic deformation response of low-impedance materials are identified. An approach based on the general stress equilibrium is presented and successfully implemented to include the concurrent effects of inertia and material compressibility into ...

Locomotion Of A Cylindrical Rolling Robot With A Shape Changing Outer Surface, Michael G. Puopolo, Jamey D. Jacob, Emilio Gabino

Michael G. Puopolo

A cylindrical rolling robot is developed that generates roll torque by changing the shape of its flexible, elliptical outer surface whenever one of four elliptical axes rotates past an inclination called trigger angle. The robot is equipped with a sensing/control system by which it measures angular position and angular velocity, and computes error with respect to a desired step angular velocity profile. When shape change is triggered, the newly assumed shape of the outer surface is determined according to the computed error. A series of trial rolls is conducted using various trigger angles, and energy consumed by the actuation ...

Computational Finite Element Analysis Of Adaptive Gas Turbine Stator-Rotor Flow Interactions For Future Vertical Lift Propulsion, Nikita Kozak, Luis Bravo, Muthuvel Murugan, Anindya Ghoshal, Yu Yu Khine, Yuri Bazilevs, Ming-Chen Hsu

Mechanical Engineering Conference Presentations, Papers, and Proceedings

The objective of this work is to computationally investigate the impact of an incident-tolerant rotor blade concept on gas-turbine engine performance under off-design conditions. Currently, gas-turbine engines are designed to operate at a single condition with nearly fixed rotor speeds. Operation at off-design conditions, such as during hover flight or during takeoff, causes the turbine blade flow to excessively separate introducing performance degradations, excessive noise, and critical loss of operability. To address these issues, the benefits of using an incidence-tolerant rotor blade concept is explored based on a novel concept that articulates the rotating turbine blade synchronously with the stator ...

Viscoelastic Properties Of Shock Wave Exposed Brain Tissue Subjected To Unconfined Compression Experiments, Annastacia K. Mccarty, Ling Zhang, Sarah Hansen, William J. Jackson, Sarah A. Bentil

Sarah A. Bentil

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) affect millions of people each year. While research has been dedicated to determining the mechanical properties of the uninjured brain, there has been a lack of investigation on the mechanical properties of the brain after experiencing a primary blast-induced TBI. In this paper, whole porcine brains were exposed to a shock wave to simulate blast-induced TBI. First, ten (10) brains were subjected to unconfined compression experiments immediately following shock wave exposure. In addition, 22 brains exposed to a shock wave were placed in saline solution and refrigerated between 30 minutes and 6.0 hours before undergoing ...

Applications Of Laser Machining For Fiber Optic Sensor Development, Lauren Sailor

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Acute Angle Repositioning In Mobile C-Arm Using Image Processing And Deep Learning, Armin Yazdanshenas

Mechanical Engineering Theses

During surgery, medical practitioners rely on the mobile C-Arm medical x-ray system (C-Arm) and its fluoroscopic functions to not only perform the surgery but also validate the outcome. Currently, technicians reposition the C-Arm arbitrarily through estimation and guesswork. In cases when the positioning and repositioning of the C-Arm are critical for surgical assessment, uncertainties in the angular position of the C-Arm components hinder surgical performance. This thesis proposes an integrated approach to automatically reposition C-Arms during critically acute movements in orthopedic surgery. Robot vision and control with deep learning are used to determine the necessary angles of rotation for desired ...

Viscoelastic Properties Of Shock Wave Exposed Brain Tissue Subjected To Unconfined Compression Experiments, Annastacia K. Mccarty, Ling Zhang, Sarah Hansen, William J. Jackson, Sarah A. Bentil

Mechanical Engineering Publications

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) affect millions of people each year. While research has been dedicated to determining the mechanical properties of the uninjured brain, there has been a lack of investigation on the mechanical properties of the brain after experiencing a primary blast-induced TBI. In this paper, whole porcine brains were exposed to a shock wave to simulate blast-induced TBI. First, ten (10) brains were subjected to unconfined compression experiments immediately following shock wave exposure. In addition, 22 brains exposed to a shock wave were placed in saline solution and refrigerated between 30 minutes and 6.0 hours before undergoing ...

Development Of Optimized Phenomic Predictors For Efficient Plant Breeding Decisions Using Phenomic-Assisted Selection In Soybean, Kyle Parmley, Koushik Nagasubramanian, Soumik Sarkar, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, Asheesh K. Singh

Baskar Ganapathysubramanian

The rate of advancement made in phenomic-assisted breeding methodologies has lagged those of genomic-assisted techniques, which is now a critical component of mainstream cultivar development pipelines. However, advancements made in phenotyping technologies have empowered plant scientists with affordable high-dimensional datasets to optimize the operational efficiencies of breeding programs. Phenomic and seed yield data was collected across six environments for a panel of 292 soybean accessions with varying genetic improvements. Random forest, a machine learning (ML) algorithm, was used to map complex relationships between phenomic traits and seed yield and prediction performance assessed using two cross-validation (CV) scenarios consistent with breeding ...