Engineering Commons^™

Experimental Evaluation Of A Krypton Propellant Arrangement In A T-100-3 Hall-Effect Thruster, Adam Patel, Javier Cortina Fernandez, Justin Chow, Osvaldo Alejandro Martin, Alexey Shashurin

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Stationary Hall thrusters are electric, moderate-specific impulse propulsion systems developed in Russia. These devices manipulate electric and magnetic fields to expel ionized gas (plasma) components, resulting in thrust. The success of Hall-effect engines in USSR satellite-transfer missions quickly sparked western interest in the design. Extensive government and academic study commenced shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the technology was made available to the United States. The common SPT-100 model was the primary subject of such studies. Unfortunately, limited literature exists for rare and uncommon Hall thruster models. The T-100-3 stationary plasma thruster suffers from this gap; few …

Study Of The Effective Thermal Conductivity Of Polymer Composites With Varying Filler Arrangements, Debraliz Isaac Aragones, Rajath Kantharaj, Aaditya Candadai, Amy Marconnet

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Alternative thermal management solutions for electronic devices are being widely explored due to the increasing heat concentration that results from shrinking sizes and increasing power of modern electronics. Clearly, there is a need to spread the heat effectively in these systems, and polymer composites can potentially provide high thermal conductivity at low filler fraction while maintaining desirable mechanical properties for electronic packaging. The present study aims to investigate the effective thermal conductivity of various copper filler arrangements in a polymer matrix. The polymer composites are fabricated using laser cut acrylic templates to embed aligned copper rods in epoxy and create …

Spice Based Compact Model For Electrical Switching Of Antiferromagnet, Xe Jin Chan, Jan Kaiser, Pramey Upadhyaya

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

A simulation framework that can model the behavior of antiferromagnets (AFMs) is essential to building novel high-speed devices. The electrical switching of AFMs allows for high performance memory applications. With new phenomena in spintronics being discovered, there is a need for flexible and expandable models. With that in mind, we developed a model for AFMs which can be used to simulate AFM switching behavior in SPICE. This approach can be modified for adding modules, keeping pace with new developments. The proposed AFM switching model is based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation (LLG). LLG along with an exchange coupling module is implemented …

Investigation Of The Skin Effect In Alternating Currents, Matthew Liang

The International Student Science Fair 2018

My research is on the investigation of the skin effect in alternating currents. The skin effect is when an alternating current tends to flow on the surface of the conductor, such that the current density is highest near the surface, and decreases with greater depths in the conductor. This is due to the alternating current inducing changing magnetic fields, which in turn induces currents that oppose the original flow of current, resisting the current flowing through the centre the most. This reduces the effective cross-sectional area of the conductor and increases the resistance, causing increased power losses. This effect becomes …

Energy Conversion System For Travelers (Ecost), Thipok Bovornratanaraks

The International Student Science Fair 2018

We have innovated “The Energy Conversion System for Travelers” or the ECoST. With the fact that most travelers have wheeled cabin-bags, whilst walking, the wheels will rotate so why don’t we harvest electricity from this kinetic energy? We thus install our innovation, the ECoST, to the bag to generate electricity from the spinning wheels. The electricity is then kept in the storage unit and ready to charge your empty battery devices in an emergency case via a USB port. To make life easy, our ECoST was designed to replicate the power bank charging method; therefore, we can charge …

Solar-Powered Bushfire Detection Mechanism, Aryaman Sud

The International Student Science Fair 2018

This project designed a prototype preventative measure for heat-induced disasters like bushfires and general home fires. The motivation for this project was the loss of life and property due to wildfire in rural Australia. The micro-controller will send an alert message and sound an alarm when the temperature value exceeds or equals the set temperature of . It is programmed using the programming language embedded ‘C’. Comprising of a solar panel, siren, temperature sensor and a Bluetooth module, this eco-friendly device can provide digitalised warnings to homes and farms where protection matters most.

Simplistic programming using the KEIL IDE software …

Solar-Powered Bushfire Detection Mechanism, Aryaman Sud

The International Student Science Fair 2018

This project designed a prototype preventative measure for heat-induced disasters like bushfires and general home fires. The motivation for this project was the loss of life and property due to wildfire in rural Australia. The micro-controller will send an alert message and sound an alarm when the temperature value exceeds or equals the set temperature of . It is programmed using the programming language embedded ‘C’. Comprising of a solar panel, siren, temperature sensor and a Bluetooth module, this eco-friendly device can provide digitalised warnings to homes and farms where protection matters most.

Simplistic programming using the KEIL IDE software …

Investigation Of The Skin Effect In Alternating Currents, Matthew Liang

The International Student Science Fair 2018

My research is on the investigation of the skin effect in alternating currents. My project is broken down into 4 sub-aims. The first aim would be, to be able to mathematically model the distribution of current in the radius of the wire, which consists of the applications of the Maxwell equation and solving zeroth order differential Bessel equations of the first kind. The next aim would be to computationally plot out the desired current readings as the depth of the wire increases from the surface, using the Matlab software. The third aim that I have would be conducting an experiment, …

Energy Conversion System For Travelers (Ecost), Thipok Bovornratanaraks

The International Student Science Fair 2018

We have innovated “The Energy Conversion System for Travelers” or the ECoST. With the fact that most travelers have wheeled cabin-bags, whilst walking, the wheels will rotate so why don’t we harvest electricity from this kinetic energy? We thus install our innovation, the ECoST, to the bag to generate electricity from the spinning wheels. The electricity is then kept in the storage unit and ready to charge your empty battery devices in an emergency case via a USB port. To make life easy, our ECoST was designed to replicate the power bank charging method; therefore, we can charge …

Device Characterization Of Solar Inverters, Katelyn Alexandria Bolinsky

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Solar energy is one of the most significant research thrusts in the modern era. Solar inverters are devices used to convert the DC energy of sunlight into AC energy that can be used on the power grid. Typically, they contain silicon; however, new substances such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride are being tested. These materials could increase the efficiency of solar energy, decrease the overall cost, and are potentially more durable than silicon. In order to determine if these new substances can actually benefit the solar industry, they need to be characterized for different attributes with different parameters. As …

Weed And Crop Discrimination Through An Offline Computer Vision Algorithm, Phillip Jamison Putney

Scholar Week 2016 - present

With the recent global interest in organic farming and cultivation, many people are turning away from chemical-based herbicides and moving towards alternate methods to extirpate weeds living amongst their crops. Of the methods proposed, robotic weed detection and removal is the most promising because of its possibility to be completely autonomous. Several robust, fully-autonomous robots have been developed, although none have approved for commercial use. This paper proposes a weed and crop discrimination algorithm that utilizes an excessive green color filter paired with principal component analysis to detect spatial frequencies within an image corresponding to different types of weeds and …

Human Following Using Kinect V2, Nate J. Titus, Tori M. Handley, Josiah D. Watson

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

With the emergence of continuously improving imaging and image processing technologies comes the challenge of applying those technologies to create robots that can make navigational decisions based on visual inputs. In this project, a human-following robot is designed and implemented using the Microsoft Kinect v2 system for PC. This system feeds the robot both color and depth information from the environment in front of it, allowing it to navigate obstacles and follow a specific user. The Kinect is used to find the user’s location with respect to the robot, based primarily on what the user is wearing and where the …