Engineering Commons^™

Damage Detection With An Integrated Smart Composite Using A Magnetostriction-Based Nondestructive Evaluation Method: Integrating Machine Learning For Prediction, Christopher Nelon

All Dissertations

The development of composite materials for structural components necessitates methods for evaluating and characterizing their damage states after encountering loading conditions. Laminates fabricated from carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRPs) are lightweight alternatives to metallic plates; thus, their usage has increased in performance industries such as aerospace and automotive. Additive manufacturing (AM) has experienced a similar growth as composite material inclusion because of its advantages over traditional manufacturing methods. Fabrication with composite laminates and additive manufacturing, specifically fused filament fabrication (fused deposition modeling), requires material to be placed layer-by-layer. If adjacent plies/layers lose adhesion during fabrication or operational usage, the strength …

Bongoties Tying Machine Design, Zachary Stednitz, Tori Bornino, Jackson Mclaughlin, Shea Charkowsky

Mechanical Engineering

BongoTies are a reusable tool for cable management or general fastening, consisting of a strong rubber band attached to a bamboo pin. BongoTies is a company founded by our sponsor Tim Petros that sells its product on a variety of popular shopping sites, such as Amazon and eBay. Currently, the assembly process is to hand-tie the rubber band to the pin for every BongoTie. This is too slow to keep up with demand, requires a skilled worker with good dexterity, and can cause pain or injury if the rubber band snaps back onto the worker’s fingers. In this senior project …

Recycled Printer Filament, Charlotte Hyland, Troy D. Molinar

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of recycling PLA filament for 3D printing on its material properties. After examining these effects, PLA and carbon fiber additives were mixed with recycled PLA pellets in different ratios to attempt to regain material properties lost in the recycling process. To complete these findings, an experiment was design and executed.

The research found that tensile strength during multiple iterations of recycling remained mostly unaffected, however, the strain degraded exponentially. In the PLA additive study, high ratios of PLA additive were able to increase the strength and strain properties of the …

Materials And Process Design For Ceramic Fused Filament Fabrication (Cf3) Of Hydroxyapatite., Kavish Sudan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ceramic fused filament fabrication (CF3) enables the fabrication of highly customizable ceramic parts at relatively lower costs compared to other AM technologies. Advanced ceramics, having specific or niche applications, call for a high level of accuracy to meet the performance requirements. For achieving the desired level of accuracy in any manufacturing process, it is important to know the effect of involved parameters at different stages of fabrication. CF3 has been around for a while but there has been a severe lack of literature dealing with understanding the effect of process parameters on the final part properties. In this study, Hydroxyapatite …

Centrifugal Microfluidic Platform For Solid-Phase-Extraction (Spe) And Fluorescence Detection Applications, Yong Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Solid phase extraction (SPE) is a widely used method to separate and concentrate the target molecules in liquid mixture. Traditional SPE has to be conducted in the laboratory with professional equipment and skilled operators. The microfluidic and 3D printing technology have opened up the opportunity in developing miniaturized automatic instruments. The main contribution of this research is to integrate the SPE process on a novel centrifugal platform. Various valves are applied on the platform to help control the aqueous sample and reagents in the cartridge.

First, a centrifugal microfluidic platform was built for automatically detecting trace oil pollution in water. …

Design For Additive Manufacturing, Michael Charonnat, Leonardo Franco-Muñoz, Sam Noble, J.P. Purdom

Mechanical Engineering

This document outlines the critical design details and timeline for the Design for Additive Manufacturing Senior Project sponsored by Solar Turbines, Inc. The scope of this project encompasses the redesign of two of Solar Turbine’s cast parts for metal additive manufacturing in order to minimize lead time, cost, and weight. With the overall objective of performing in-depth analysis exploring affordability & feasibility, this redesign process will aid Solar Turbines in expanding their knowledge of Design for Additive Manufacturing principles and enable them to further incorporate the use of additive manufacturing into their production processes. The first part that the team …

Modeling And Validations Of Control Parameters For Material Extrusion-Based Additive Manufacturing Of Thixotropic Aluminum Alloys., Lars Herhold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Additive Manufacturing (AM) with metals has been accomplished mainly through powder bed fusion processes. Initial experiments and simulations using Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing (MEAM) have been performed by various researchers especially using low melting alloys. Recently Stratasys Inc. submitted a patent application for the use of their Material Extrusion technology also called Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) where they describe the process using thixotropic semi-solid alloys. Currently this process using semi-solid, engineering type alloys such as A356 or THIXALLOY 540 aluminum have not been researched to evaluate the control parameters. This research combines the in-depth knowledge of applying thixotropic semi-solid aluminum …

Fabrication Of 3d Conjugated Polymer Structures Via Vat Polymerization Additive Manufacturing, Andrew T. Cullen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Conjugated polymers are a class of electromechanically active materials that can produce motion in response to an electric potential. This motion can be harnessed to perform mechanical work, and therefore these materials are particularly well suited for use as sensors and actuators in microelectromechanical systems. Conventional methods to fabricate conjugated polymer actuators result in planar morphologies that limit fabricated devices to simplistic linear or bending actuation modes. To overcome this limitation, this work develops a conjugated polymer formulation and associated additive manufacturing method capable of realizing three-dimensional conductive polymer structures. A light-based additive manufacturing technique known as vat polymerization is …

Design And Implementation Of An Air Multiplier Fan For Pc, George Demian

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Mechanical engineering student (B.S.) senior design project. Conception, design (SolidWorks), 3D printing & processing, testing of a scaled down air multiplier "bladeless" fan within a computer chassis as a cooling solution.

Farmbot, James Cruz, Scott Herrington, Bryan Rodriguez

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this project was to develop the hardware for the current Farmbot to perform its primary functions, and to create a template for a system that would be adaptable for future users and developers. The scope of the project included creating a universal tool mount, a seeding system, and a watering and nutrient mixing system. This project was brought to the students by sponsor Rory Aronson, the creator of Farmbot. The Cal Poly Farmbot team was able to go through an extensive brainstorming and iterative process for each part, where testing was able to be incorporated immediately due …