Engineering Commons^™

Waiting-Time Paradox In 1922, Naoki Masuda, Takayuki Hiraoka

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

We present an English translation and discussion of an essay that a Japanese physicist, Torahiko Terada, wrote in 1922. In the essay, he described the waiting-time paradox, also called the bus paradox, which is a known mathematical phenomenon in queuing theory, stochastic processes, and modern temporal network analysis. He also observed and analyzed data on Tokyo City trams to verify the relevance of the waiting-time paradox to busy passengers in Tokyo at the time. This essay seems to be one of the earliest documentations of the waiting-time paradox in a sufficiently scientific manner.

Product Realization Capstone: Element Proof Safety Steps For Willie Price Lab School, Catherine Thomas, Allan Heuerman, Jared Mumme

Honors Theses

The purpose of this document is to describe the process we took to complete our capstone which paired the Center for Manufacturing Excellence with the Willie Price Lab School. The goal of the capstone was to remake step stools for the students of Willie Price, as the last stools failed to withstand weather damage. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, plans were hindered, shifting the goal from actually producing the steps to creating instructions so that a younger Center for Manufacturing class could complete the production at a later date. Standardized Work Instructions, a detailed production plan, and engineering drawings were ...

Applying Lean Manufacturing Principles At Vip Cinema: Standardizing Hardware Assembly Workstations, Cameron Koch

Honors Theses

This paper will explore the benefits of standardization and consistency in a manufacturing setting by demonstrating the value of improved tooling and organization. “Lean Manufacturing” is the broad term used to describe key principles that can be applied to most businesses to reduce waste and increase efficiency. This ideology’s theme is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. The purpose of its adoption is to transform managers and operators into experts of identifying the deficiencies in many manufacturing and assembly processes and implementing changes that can lead to enormous improvements in takt time, production output, and ultimately, profitability. At ...

Dataset For Analysis Of Very High Surface Area 3d Printed Media In A Moving Bed Biofilm Sequencing Batch Reactor For Wastewater Treatment, Gabriel Proano-Pena, Andres L. Carrano, David M. Blersch

Research Data

This dataset includes 15 subfolders named Table6 trough Table20. Each folder is associated with a supplemental table. Each subfolder includes three files: .csv, .pdf/A, and .txt. The Table6 folder contains the raw data derived from experimentation. The remaining folders relate to data processing represented by figures or remarked as significant in the related manuscript: "Analysis of very high surface area 3D printed media in a Moving Bed Biofilm Sequencing Batch Reactor for Wastewater Treatment".

Learning & Planning For Self-Driving Ride-Hailing Fleets, Jack Morris

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Through simulation, we demonstrate that incorporation of self-driving vehicles into ride-hailing fleets can greatly improve urban mobility. After modeling existing driver-rider matching algorithms including Uber’s Batched Matching and Didi Chuxing’s Learning and Planning approach, we develop a novel algorithm adapting the latter to a fleet of Autos – self-driving ride-hailing vehicles – and Garages – specialized hubs for storage and refueling. By compiling driver-rider matching, idling, storage, refueling, and redistribution decisions in one unifying framework, we enable a system-wide optimization approach for self-driving ride-hailing previously unseen in the literature. In contrast with existing literature that labeled driverless taxis as economically infeasible ...

Locating Relay Nodes To Maximize Wireless Sensor Network Lifetime: A Numerical Study, Maria Rene Arandia Jimenez

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a group of sensors deployed over an area, which monitor changes in the environment, collects them as data and forwards it between sensors through wireless links. Data is routed, either in a single-hop or multi-hop manner, with the goal of getting this collected data to the sink nodes, which have higher computational capabilities and connects the network with a user interface. Studies have determined that multi-hop WSNs that integrate relay nodes, which function is to only receive and forward data, can maximize lifetime network. A linear programming model, created by Chang and Tassiulas in ...

Characterizing Statin Use Among Prediabetic Patients With Predictive Analytics, Alexandra Gentile

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death in the United States and can cause severe impairments to those diagnosed. Prediabetes is a state when a patient has higher fasting plasma glucose levels than a non-diabetic person but is not quite high enough to be considered diabetes. Both diabetic and prediabetic patients are at higher risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVD), which is the leading cause of death in the United States. The primary form for prevention and treatment of CVD is through statin therapy. Statins are a class of medications used to treat and prevent CVD by limiting cholesterol ...

Curriculum Optimization Via Activity-On-Node Network Modeling, Caroline Rhomberg

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

University degree plans must be carefully planned so that they allow students the best chance of succeeding. Although for the better, with the advancement of technology and its incorporation into the classroom, it can be argued that the complexity and difficulty of some long-established engineering core classes has changed. With this trend certain combinations of engineering courses have become unfavorable in terms of course withdrawal and fail rates stemming from the interaction of course challenges. A wealth of data has been collected on this topic and will be utilized in this project. As one can imagine, the probability of success ...

Re-Evaluating Coverage Metrics For Wireless Sensor Network Border Security Applications, Kevin Haney

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Wireless sensor networks are an emerging technology used to monitor an environment over time. One specific application of the wireless sensor network is the border security application. Researchers have adapted coverage metrics from general wireless sensor network literature to fit the border security application. While some of the adapted metrics count the number of sensors detecting a potential target, others measure the distance between a potential target and its nearest sensor. No existing metric accounts for both of these factors. To take advantage of this gap and to attempt to increase the accuracy to which coverage is measured in this ...

Intruder Preference And Route Selection: A Gis Data Approach, Griffin Mathews

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requested an Engineering Research and Development Center study incorporating modeling and simulation to determine the selection, amount, and optimal location of sensor suites along the U.S. Border. The study objective is to maximize the probability of detection and apprehension of illegal elements attempting to enter. A study on intruders and their preferences were conducted to create an intruder preference value map to determine the preferred intruder routes taken after crossing the border. The results of this research were integrated into another study on the selection and simulation of sensor suites.

Intruder context and ...

Optimal Emergency Response Shelter Placement Based On Population Vulnerabilities, Alexander Johnson

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Hurricane Florence was a category 4 storm which caused an estimated $24 billion in damages and the loss of 53 lives. During and immediately following Florence, there were 235 shelters operating in and around the North Carolina (NC) area. These were used as temporary housing for storm victims and by emergency responders to distribute relief supplies and provide medical services. Emergency officials consider several factors when deciding where to open shelters, including, for example, proximity of victims and their levels of medical needs. Access disparities, or factors creating barriers that limit entry to shelters, put certain populations and regions at ...

Improving Offensive Player Performance Measures For Assessing Free Agent Major League Baseball Players, Henley Wells

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Professional sports teams are important to their local economies, so successful franchises are significant contributors to their prosperity. This need for successful teams drives the owners and general managers to perform in-depth analyses on potential players to gain insight, so the best players can be chosen. Major League Baseball is one of the largest sports leagues in the world, so their analysis of players must be excellent to ensure they sign the best players and can compete at a high level.

Baseball is a complex sport with many different statistics evaluating nearly every part of a player’s game. Because ...

Aerial Screw Vtol Rotorcraft, Macale Rielly, Alexa Culp, Thomas Osteen, Adeline Perry

Senior Design Project For Engineers

Known as the “Renaissance Man,” DaVinci’s impressive knowledge of mechanics and inventive prowess would influence engineers and innovators hundreds of years later to make human flight a reality. However, due to the limited capacity of engineering and manufacturing at the time, his invention had been shallowly investigated in a production setting. This project strove to properly acknowledge DaVinci’s invention by thorough examination and critical analysis of his concept with the hopes of gaining a better understanding of why it is considered the “foundation of vertical flight”.

An iterative design approach was employed, utilizing faculty and university resources, team ...

Kennesaw State University - Maintenance Optimization And Cost Analysis, Mary E. Ogidigben, David T. Murphy, William L. Fowler

Senior Design Project For Engineers

The Department of Housing and Residence Life was looking for ways to improve the quality of their work while saving costs at the same time. The department allowed the team to look over their work orders where the team noticed over 50% of the work orders were related to room turnover. After this discovery, the team focused all efforts on room turnover and went over the process in detail with management. The team asked to see the standard operating procedure for room turnover and learned that most of the staff did not know they had one.

The team wanted to ...

The Caster Ladle Lancing System, Andrew Pearson, Alexander Frank, Zachariah Bishop

Scholar Week 2016 - present

The Shielded Movable Oxygen Lance Turret is a cart that is easily maneuverable, that allows an operator to safely lance in a steel casting situation with the protection of a shield and an apparatus to aim and burn away debris.The relatively small design and wheels allows the device to be stored and accessed when needed. This was constructed with industrial materials to withstand a harsh working environment of the caster area where molten steel can be between 2700°F and 3000°F. The Turret has a body made of galvanized iron, and shield infused with polycarbonate as it is ...

Itw Deltar Model Factory, Bri Hollowell, Tyler Rogers, Jake Klingelsmith

Scholar Week 2016 - present

The project given to the design team was a request from ITW Deltar to improve their packaging system for some production machines in cell C. The primary goal of the project is to optimize the safety and workflow of the packaging systems in cell C. The safety of the packaging system will be determined using the REBA risk assessment number. The workflow improvement is determined through analysis of the packaging time and the walking distances of the workers.

The design team identified the functional requirements and design constraints that need to be met. These functional requirements include the packaging system ...

Reconstitution Efficiency On Elution Process, Brandon Winter, Landon Beachy, Samantha Stejskal, Zachary Rice

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Our group is presenting on the Reconstitution Efficiency on Elution Process for MilliporeSigma. The process that we are working with is the mixing of BAAP (Bovine Albumin Acetone Powder) into reverse osmosis water. This process is the first step of many in the making of medical test kits, of which include HIV/AID, strep throat, and pregnancy tests. Our initial task was to reduce the mixing time by 50%, however after further exploration of the problem, a more stable and consistent process turned into our primary goal and a significant reduction in time became a secondary goal. Initially, we were ...

A System Dynamics Model Of Supply-Side Issues Influencing Beef Consumption In Nigeria, Kelechukwu G. Odoemena, Jeffrey P. Walters, Holger Maximilian Kleemann

Faculty Publications - Biomedical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering

The per capita consumption of beef in Nigeria is reducing amidst a rising population that is dependent on beef as a major source of animal protein. In this paper, a system dynamics (SD) model was developed with the aim of testing exploratory policies aimed at reversing this trend. The simulations of various policy tests showed that, of all the policies tested, having a higher carcass yield seems to be the most efficient solution, but its feasibility faces some steep biological and ecological challenges. However, a combination of policies that cuts across the land–cattle–market nexus is necessary to obtain ...

Water Supply Capacity Development In The Context Of Global Change, Patrick Breach

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The ANEMI model is an integrated assessment model of global change that emphasizes the role of water resources. The model is based on the principles of system dynamics simulation in order to analyze changes in the Earth system using feedback processes. Securing water resources for the future is a key issue of global change, and ties into global systems of population growth, climate change carbon cycle, hydrologic cycle, economy, energy production, land use and pollution generation.

This thesis focusses on the development of global water supplies necessary to keep pace with a growing population and global economy using an integrated ...

An Ergonomic Analysis Of Ingredient Batching In A Dairy Bottling Facility, Hayden Johnson, Laila Elhidmi

Scholars Week

Dairy production facilities rely on batching operators to unload palletized ingredients and mix them to meet ingredient specifications. Batching operators in the dairy industry are frequently required to work for prolonged periods of time in awkward postures while performing repetitive and forceful exertions. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) typically impact workers’ performance and increase job discomfort. Such incidents are generally costly to employers as they often result in workers compensation claims and increased insurance premiums. The purpose of this study was to characterize the ergonomic risk factors associated with commonly performed batching processes and evaluate possible solutions to reduce exposure to ...

A Tendon-Driven Origami Hopper Triggered By Proprioceptive Contact Detection, Wei-Hsi Chen, Shivangi Misra, J. Diego Caporale, Daniel E. Koditschek, Shu Yang, Cynthia R. Sung

Departmental Papers (ESE)

We report on experiments with a laptop-sized (0.23m, 2.53kg), paper origami robot that exhibits highly dynamic and stable two degree-of-freedom (circular boom) hopping at speeds in excess of 1.5 bl/s (body-lengths per second) at a specific resistance O(1) while achieving aerial phase apex states 25% above the stance height over thousands of cycles. Three conventional brushless DC motors load energy into the folded paper springs through pulley-borne cables whose sudden loss of tension upon touchdown triggers the release of spring potential that accelerates the body back through liftoff to flight with a 20W powerstroke, whereupon ...

Feed Batch Mixer Box For Isu Beef Nutrition Farm, Luke Sweeney, Brennon Ryan, Mark Thompson, Luke Sinclair, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

The Iowa State Beef Nutrition Farm’s mission is to provide facilities and support for research aimed at optimizing nutrition and management of beef cattle in Iowa. Facilities include a modern open-front, 60-pen feedlot, a 7-pen feedlot with an electronic feed intake management system, and a 16-pen open-front feedlot. All pen sizes are adequate for up to six animals. There are 120 acres of improved pasture available for grazing research and several small open lots with fence line feed bunks. A modern, indoor animal handling facility, feed mill and indoor and outdoor feed storage structures are on hand.

Our client ...

Abe Souvenirs, Ray Stark, Lucas Ferrian, Joe Miller, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

The ABE department at Iowa State University frequently hosts both international and domestic visitors. The challenge we were given was to design three ABE-specific brand souvenirs to give the visitors. The souvenirs should impress the visitors and be clear, attractive, useful, and memorable. These souvenirs are to be crafted out of metal, wood, or plastic and include the skills of all members involved. External help was used for the artistic aspects of the design via personal contacts in the design department. The project was completed over the course of the 2019-2020 academic year. The main stakeholders helped to determine the ...

Design And Testing Of A Cleaning And Disinfection System For Farm Equipment And Vehicles At Livestock Farms, Noelle Hinrichs, Taeh Horbas, Matt Devine, Brett C. Ramirez, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

• During a Foreign Animal Disease (FAD) outbreak, it is critical that people, equipment, and vehicles do not inadvertently move the disease-causing agent between premises (i.e., locations where animals are housed or otherwise handled).

• To prevent this potential transmission, a cleaning and disinfection (C&D) station must be established at the clean/dirty line on infected premises, and everything going on or off the premises pass through it.

• Without this critical precaution, more viruses may remain in the environment and cause potential infection of other premises and herds; thus, making FAD containment a challenge.

Testing The Prototype Spiral Magnetic Filter, Alexander Stockmaster, Jacob Miles, Clayton Waldschmidt, Brian L. Steward, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

o Fleenor Mfg. is a small family-owned company based in Pella, Iowa. They look for unique problems to solve in the agricultural, construction, forestry, mining, and utility vehicle markets. Fleenor Mfg. It manufactures a wide variety of filters and hydraulic components. Their customers range from individuals to large scale companies such as John Deere.

o Our client has a patent-pending design for a spiral magnetic filter to filter out contaminants from various types of fluid. Fleenor Manufacturing needed data to prove the effectiveness of the filter.

o Fleenor Mfg. Needed data to be able to prove to companies interested in ...

Testing Poultry Dust Mitigation Practices, Grant Honken, Benjamin Baumgard, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

 Cage-free chicken farms are prone to significant amounts of dust in the air due to the disturbance of the litter (bedding) on the ground. We needed to develop a physical test system and Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that is able to capture and record dust samples. So the client is able to test different litter management practices, vegetable oil, for example, to minimize the amount of dust airborne in cage-free chicken farms.

 The ideal amount of litter management treatment is unknown. This must be solved to help lower the amount of dust that is airborne in cage-free chicken farms. A ...

Row Unit Test Stand, Jason Vaske, Tristan Louvan, Brandon Zumbach, Andrew Anstoetter, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

o Service Motor Company is an official Case IH dealer based in Dale, Wisconsin, that sells new and used Case IH equipment and specializes in servicing the equipment as well.

o Since Service Motor Company is marketing products to customers, they want an easy and new way to demonstrate the new 2000 series planter row-unit.

o Service Motor wants a show stand to place at dealerships for customers to see how this row-unit works, and to be able to easily roll around the dealership with the row unit on.

o Other dealerships have different types of show stands to show ...

Biocentury Research Farm - Paint Booth Automation, Tylor Kosary, Eric Millers, Samuel Gray, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

o BioCentury Research Farm is an affiliate of Iowa State University and operates with the mission to support agricultural sciences and research in local regions. The Farm assembles parts for agricultural equipment.

o The BioCentury Research Farm (BCRF) is requesting paint booth modification. The current paint booth has an exhaust fan that is manually controlled. The fan is operated with an appropriate cycle of about 85% of the time. However, the other 15% of the time, the fan is either not used, turned off too soon, or left on too long.

o The issue has continued to waste time, affecting ...

Abe Farm Door Automation, Nick Niemeyer, Adam Degaetano, Tyler J. Carney, Creed Tucker, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

The Hydroswing door for large equipment access to the south end of the Harvest Storage and Transportation building requires manual operation through the entirety of the open/close cycle. The operation of the door has risks concerning the safety of people and equipment. The door must have a safety device in place to make sure there is no equipment or personal in the way while closing.

o The client is an entity of Iowa State University located on the ISU BioCentury Research Farm.

o Manually operating the door creates wasted time because it requires a person to stand by the ...

Cellular Layout Adjustment And Standardization, Ben Irwin, Andres Navarro, Scott Burnell, Joe Medina, Michael Anderson, Jacek A. Koziel

TSM 416 Technology Capstone Projects

Improve Layout, Material/Process Flow, and Throughput of G.M. Sidestep (Running Board) Assembly Cells.

DeeZee Manufacturing is a medium-sized truck accessory and fabrication company located in central Iowa. Established in 1977, DeeZee is committed to building durable, functional, and stylish products with the consumer in mind. The company is always promoting a cleaner tomorrow by using eco-friendly manufacturing processes and lean practices to reduce emissions and energy use. DeeZee is contracted by most of the large car manufacturers such as Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda, and Toyota to produce parts for their vehicles. DeeZee has a significant presence in Iowa ...