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Cost Effective And Non-Intrusive Occupancy Detection In Residential Building Through Machine Learning Algorithm, Chenli Wang

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

Residential and commercial buildings consume more than 40% of energy and 76% of electricity in the U.S. Buildings also emit more than one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which is the largest sector. A significant portion of the energy is wasted by unnecessary operations on heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, such as overheating/overcooling or operation without occupants. Wasteful behaviors consume twice the amount of energy compared to energy-conscious behaviors. Many commercial buildings utilize a building management system (BMS) and occupancy sensors to better control and monitor the HVAC and lighting system based on occupancy information. However, the complicated …

'Bici-Bomba' Pedal Powered Well Purification System, Matthew Kamimura, Devan Hollar, Ally Belica, Liam Scobey

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This senior design project consists of designing and building a bike powered well pump that purifies water. The Guatemalan NGO Maya Pedal is the critical customer that requested this project, and will help facilitate implementing it in the San Andres community. The project addresses these main needs: providing an easier, faster way to retrieve water and to clean water to safe drinking levels. In addition to these primary needs, a major goal is having the project be scalable within the San Andres community. This means that all of the components are available in Guatemala at reasonable prices, it is durable …

Hydrolastic Damping: A Change To The Modern Helmet, Mark Buesa, Ara Moosekian, Michael Simeon, Ian Watts

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

High rates of concussion in the NFL suggest that helmet technology is not satisfactory for the athletes, and soft foam padding has dominated the helmet industry since its inception. The team proposed that implementing a fluid-based hydrolastic suspension system in the helmet would reduce the risk of concussions at all levels of competition. After using COMSOL to successfully model fluid flow through the dampers and after physical testing on dampers filled with air and water lead to increased "time to stop" of an average of 240% when compared to traditional foam padding, the team concluded that the dampers showed promise …

Graftthis: Modernizing Organic Farming, Brendan Gescher, Molly Jansky, Jack Margolis, Kaleb Pattawi

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Traditional plant characteristic improvement techniques are accompanied by certain disadvantages. Most notably, it takes several seasons in order to breed for favorable characteristics such as crop yield and disease resistance via deliberate selection. In order to expedite this improvement process, grafting - a method in which two separate plants with individual, desirable qualities are physically combined, may be used.

This report explores the development of a regulated environment as a solution to many of the problems associated with the grafting of plants during their recovery stage. The grafting chamber model necessitates: (1) an ability to maintain the specific temperature, humidity …

Neptune: Marine Rov Retrofit And Shape Memory Alloy Water Sampler, Ben O'Brien, Sophia Cero, Artie Henderson, Garrett Nelson, Eleni Spirakis

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The Robotics Systems Lab at Santa Clara University worked closely with Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to design and modernize a safe, low-voltage remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and fabricate a shape memory alloy (SMA) triggered water sampler. The scope of this project was split into two parts. The first was to modernize an existing ROV frame and flotation device with low-cost, low-voltage components for depths up to 300ft. The second scope was to design and manufacture a 100ml water sampling system that was mostly mechanical. Due to the onset of COVID-19, the functionality and performance of the ROV was verified …

Sunny-Side Solutions: A Solar Powered Water Heating And Shower System, Adrienne Lee, Malonda Mcelwee, Jada Paddock, Jesus Reyes

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Sunny-Side Solutions is a solar water heating and shower system designed for Naretu Academy in Narok, Kenya, to provide the academy's teachers a simple, reliable, and frugal method of receiving hot water for daily showers. After thorough research and testing, the final system's main components are ½ diameter, 54.9 m long irrigation piping solar collector, a 100 L insulated hot water tank, and a 67 W circulation pump. These components ensure that all water that enters the system will be able to achieve a final temperature of 38 °C and maintain this temperature until the teachers shower and drain the …

Heavy Lift Drone, Sam Carhart, David Cooper, Luis Gaitan, Michael Kaliterna, Sami Lama, Paul Rogel-Herrera, Yuya Yabe

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Despite the rapid rise in the number of drones in the past few years, there has been little work done to produce a drone that is optimized for the FAA' s 55 lb upper takeoff limit. This gap in the market is one that the Heavy Lift Drone (HLD) fills - a light-weight, higher payload capability, and inexpensive drone to be used in commercial applications - most notably irrigation monitoring. The HLD is a contra-rotating hexagonal configuration system featuring two levels of propellers that allow for larger propeller diameter and generate greater lift. After performing extensive finite element analyses and …

Design Of An Ultrasonic Ribbon Bonder, Miguel Asturias, Tioga Benner, Brandon Van Gogh

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Ultrasonic Bonding is a solid-state bonding mechanism that can join two dissimilar materials. This report details work done to design, build, and analyze an ultrasonic ribbon bonder for research use at Santa Clara University. The bonder would allow researchers to view the bond site as the bond is being formed, which would be accomplished by bonding an aluminum ribbon to a silica substrate. Unfortunately, issues corresponding to COVID-19 led to difficulty in building the bonder during the final stages of construction. This led the team to focus on analysis rather than construction of the bonder. Specifically focusing on creating a …

Shape Memory Alloy Actuator And Fluid Sampler Development For Extreme Environments, Rachel Stolzman

Mechanical Engineering Master's Theses

Due to the high temperature, high pressure environments of deep-sea boreholes, using conventional electronics to capture temperature-specific water samples may be unreliable or even impossible. In this project, we introduce the use of shape memory alloys as thermal sensors to trigger an actuator to take a water sample at a specified temperature. A custom sampler that can interface with a variety of developed triggers was also designed and fabricated for use in deep-sea boreholes. All of the developed triggers are modular and designed for ease-of-use by users on a drillship with limited tools and equipment. The shape memory alloys used …

Basil Leaf Automation, Andrew Soong, Chris Nelson, John Goldsberry, Kalle Suzuki, Nikolas Abenoja, Sherene Victor, Simon Liu

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Recent population and wage increases have forced farmers to grow more food without a proportionate increase in work force. Automation is a key factor in reducing cost and increasing efficiency. In this paper, we explore our automation solution that utilizes position manipulation and vision processing to identify, pick up, and drop a leaf into a can. Two stepper motors and a linear actuator drove the three-dimensional actuation. Leaf and can recognition were accomplished through edge detection and machine learning algorithms. Testing proved subsystem-level functionality and proof of concept of a delicate autonomous pick-and-place robot.

Design Of A Greywater-Fed Hydroponics System, Alex Estrada, Katya Fairchok, Andrew Feldmeth, Andrew Jezak

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

To combat issues of local water insecurity, a hydroponics system was designed in partnership with LEAP 5 High School in Jane Furse, South Africa. Climate change, increasing human population, and continued environmental degradation all threaten access to clean drinking water. Approximately seventy percent of all freshwater is used for agriculture globally, thus threatening food security especially in developing countries where access to water is potentially volatile. The hydroponics garden system utilizes sustainable materials, a self-monitoring temperature controls system, and greywater input, to act as an educational tool for students and significantly reduce freshwater use compared to traditional, in-ground agriculture. An …

Mission-Oriented Multirobot Adaptive Navigation Of Scalar Fields, Robert Mcdonald

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

Scalar fields are spatial regions where each point has an associated physical value. These fields often contain features of interest, such as local extrema and contours with a value of significance. Traditional navigation techniques require robots to exhaustively search these regions to find the areas of significance, while adaptive navigation allows them to move directly to the points of interest based on measurements of the field taken during the navigation process. This work expands existing adaptive navigation techniques by adding a finite state machine layer to the control architecture, and using it as a discrete mode controller; the state machine …