Engineering Commons^™

Fabrication Of Composite Laminates With Embedded Pizo-Ceramic Sensors And Actuators, Todd Nelson Kelsheimer

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The purpose of the research project is to investigate the methods for embedding pizo-ceramic sensors and actuators in a composite ( a fiber reinforced epoxy matrix). The importance of these sensors and actuators is vital in controlling the vibration and excessive strain on a structure causing fatigue or failure. With the control of these instabilities by the actuator, proper performance of the structure is achieved. Most sensors and actuators are surface mounted because (1) The sensor can pick up the greatest strain on the surface of a structure. (2) The actuator can create a stronger moment to counter balance the …

A Computer Graphic Teaching Aid For The Synthesis Of Four-Bar Linkages, Sew K. Woon

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

This project involves developing software for the use as a teaching tool in the classroom. The "four-bar linkage mechanism", often used in kinematic movement, is the main subject

The software provides a working environment to perform a graphical synthesis of a four- bar linkage to move one of the links through three specified positions in the plane. The construction process is facilitated by the built in kinematic intelligence so that the student can quickly and easily visualize the process. The construction lines are dynamically updated as the free parameters in the design are modified. This is particularly beneficial because it …

Fixed Site Facilitated Transport Of Oxygen And Nitrogen Through Plasma Polymer Films, Chad Dunnegan

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

A method of preparing plasma polymer films, in which metal chelate molecules are incorporated, is briefly outlined. The chemical reactivity of metal chelate molecules is preserved so that they may ”facilitate” the transport of oxygen molecules through the membrane. The method for testing permeability of the films is presented and results are analyzed with respect to the dual mode sorption model, applied to fixed site facilitated transport.

Forced Convective Diffusion And Interphase Heat And Mass Transfer: Computations Of Radial Functions, Temperature And Concentration Fields, And Presentation Of Local And Average Nusselt And Sherwood Numbers, Stephen Myers, X B. Reed Jr., N. Y. Shah, A. E. Penn

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

Theoretical calculations have been carried out for forced convective transport for uniform streaming and uniaxial and biaxial extensional axisymmetric flows past single spheres. Homogeneous and heterogeneous chemical reactions, both of first and of second order have also been or are presently being treated. Orthogonality and other properties of Legendre functions have been used, together with introduction of an eigenfunction expansion, to reduce the mathematical description from a partial differential equation with variable coefficients, which is nonlinear for homogeneous second order chemical reactions, to a system of coupled ordinary differential equations for the radial modes. The numerical solutions of the latter …

An Artifically Intelligent Word Recognizer To Control Appliances And Switches: The Home That Listens To Your Every Command, Joseph Bauer, Rick Steurer

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The most natural and informal means of communication and control is speech communication. Therefore, it also goes to say that control of home appliances, stereo, computer, and heating thermostat to name a few will naturally tend to this form of control.

A word recognition home controller was designed, constructed, and tested successfully. This paper will discuss the low-cost overall design, implementation, and results of a presently constructed and working "home controller." The results of this successful project in voice control are very promising and agree with the original hypothesis: A home that listens to your command is very much a …

Determination Of Flow Quality And Boundary Layer Thickness In Variable Density Wind Tunnel, Marshall Philips

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The purpose of this paper is to measure the velocity profile in the test section of the Variable Density Wind Tunnel (VDWT). The hot wire anemometer is chosen to measure the velocity profile because of its accuracy and its ability to be moved relatively close to the upper and lower surfaces of the wind tunnel. Special attention is paid to the uniformity of flow velocity in the free stream and whether it varies with position in the tunnel. The measurements were taken at two different stations, two different temperatures, and three different speeds.

Results indicate that the velocity profiles are …

Sporomorphs And Palynological Interpretations Of Lower Oligocene Strata From The Eastern Gulf Coast, U.S.A., Lisa M. Reeves

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The Vicksburg Group in the eastern Gulf Coast of the United States belongs to one of the most complete and continuous Paleogene strata in the world. Previous studies in this region have neglected the rich palynomorph assemblages of the Lower Oligocene units of the Vicksburg Group. Four samples from Wayne County Mississippi were analyzed for palynological information on the Vicksburg Group. The initial objective of the study was to understand the principles of palynology and the basis for sporomorph identification. A minimum of 300 specimens were counted per slide to determine the distribution of sporomorphs in the sediments. Two hundred …

High-Pressure Wateijet Technology: A Review And Design Of High-Pressure Hybrid Drillbits, Azmi Zainal Adnan

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The petroleum industry has seen many technological advances since oil was first discovered in the 19th century. Some of the current technological advances in the industry include cuttings transport, drillbit design, logging, and horizontal and directional drilling. Currently, research projects are being done at UMR to find ways to further reduce drilling costs and develop new technology that could improve the drilling effectiveness. One such project is the development of high- pressure waterjet / hybrid bits to replace the conventional mechanical drillbits. In this design, the advantages of waterjet penetration are combined with those of mechanical teeth cutting action..

At …

Development Of A Launch System For Performance Studies Of Small Aircraft Models, James J. Schneider

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

This paper presents a design of a launching system that can be employed for performance studies on small aircraft models. Further the article describes a design and development of an aircraft model for use with the system. initial analysis and testing of the system using the designed aircraft model will be presented.

Design, Construction, Calibration And Applications Of An Apparatus Which Conducts The Large Missle Impact Test, John Schroeder

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

Prior to Hurricane Andrew (August 1992), the South Florida Building Code maintained provisions for the design of building openings based on wind pressure only. Hurricane Andrew provided evidence of other failure modes, including windborne debris and internal pressure. Following the hurricane, several changes were made to building codes in South Florida. One addition requires building openings to resist windborne debris. A missile impact test incorporated into recently accepted Dade and Broward Counties editions of the South Florida Building Code states a window, door, or external protection device shall resist a prescribed number of impacts from a nine pound 2x4 timber …

The Effect Of Spatial Variation Of The Turbulent Prandtl Number And Calculation Methods For Heat Transfer In High Mach Number Flows, Thomas W. Scott

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The effect of using various spatial distributions of the turbulent Prandtl number on the predicted surface heat transfer in the numerical simulation of Mach 4 flat plate flow is studied. The spatial distribution of the turbulent Prandtl number is shown to have a small effect on surface heat transfer, hence suggesting that the standard assumption of a constant turbulent Prandtl number is acceptable for high Mach number boundary layer type flows. In addition, a wall-cell control volume technique for computing heat transfer shows superior predictive capacity across the Reynolds number range when compared to the conventional calculation of surface heat …

Interactive Multimedia Applications For The Correlations Of Petroleum Fluids Properties, Herman Smith Iii

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

Interactive Multimedia Applications for the Correlations of Petroleum Fluids Properties is a truly interactive and multimedia computer application designed to better help students taking the class "The Properties of Petroleum Fluids", Petroleum Engineering 141. This computer program incorporates error and information voice messages, control over three different computer applications (HyperCard 2.2, Mathcad V3.1, and DeskPaint™ V3.2), three-dimensional multi-coloration, pop-up graphics, directional buttons, object/label-oriented programming, and floating palettes. This creates one computer application to calculate petroleum properties versus the use of multiple, often crowded graphs.

Preliminary Efforts Towards The Analysis Of Unsteady Pressure Measurements Around Wing Models In Transonic Flow, Stephen Witherspoon

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

A computer code was developed to implement methods of analyzing unsteady pressure measurements acquired from a wing model immersed in transonic flow. The code uses the fast Fourier Transform to identify phase changes and magnitudes of dominant frequencies over time in the unsteady pressure coefficients. The transformed data, as well as the raw data, are graphed and the results explained in detail identifying features depicted in the graphs. Also, the code performs some simple statistical calculations and smoothes the data to remove insignificant noise in the signal, if desired.

Development Of A Bill Of Materials From The Pdxi Data Models, Bryan A. Stanford

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The research on the development of a bill of materials has resulted in the construction of a portion of the working data model, as designed in theory by the Process Data Exchange Institute (PDXI). The theoretical object model can be found in The PDXI Data Models [1]. It was necessary to develop this working data model in order to be able to produce the bill of materials. The bill of materials was created with the help of the software package Paradox for Windows (version 4.0).

A Design Methodology For A Multi-Fpga Based Rapid Prototyping System, William Eatherton

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The movement of universities from university-created digital design software to commercial design tools has resulted in a need for a revision of existing rapid prototyping systems. The rapid prototyping system created at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and centered on a FPGA-based board (called the Anyboard), was revised to use Mentor Graphics, a sophisticated industrial EDA tool, rather than board specific software. To provide a guide for future students at UMR and other schools using the Anyboard, an example design was created with Mentor Graphics to route data between a PC bus, SRAMs, and an arithmetic logic unit.

The Feasibility Of Using Piezoelectric Flap Actuation In The Active Control Of Flutter, Aaron Laws

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

Wing flutter is one of the most important and dangerous phenomenon faced by aircraft structural design engineers. Flutter is a self exciting aeroelastic phenomenon in which portions of an aircraft structure begin to oscillate with exponentially growing amplitudes, produced by the changing aerodynamic forces and moments brought about by the deformation of the structure. There exists a characteristic flight speed, known as the flutter speed, where the structure exhibits sustained harmonic motion, ie. zero damping. Below this velocity, the vibration of the structure due to a perturbation will decrease exponentially, while above this velocity, the vibration will increase exponentially, eventually …

Performance Analysis For The Ccn Collection Apparatus, Deborah K. Bircher

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

This paper concerns the performance testing of a system to collect and chemically analyze cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). These are the atmospheric particles which nucleate cloud drops.

The air is humidified by passage through the "haze chamber", consisting of parallel vertical plates that are covered with cotton cloth and are kept wet by water supplied at the top edge. The plates are adiabatic , and should equilibrate in temperature at the wet bulb temperature of the incoming air. Measurements of the plate temperature with eighty thermocouples indicate behavior consistent with theory.

Another part of the system is called the CFD …

In-Plane/Out-Of-Plane Dynamic Racking Tests Of Curtain Wall Glass Elements, James H. Culp

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

This report describes a research project that was conducted to examine architectural glass behavior as curtain wall components subjected to earthquake-like dynamic motions. The project was an extension of an earlier pilot study conducted in 1991. The 1991 pilot study dealt only with dynamic racking of the curtain wall in its own plane.

The focus of this study was to investigate the effects of adding out-of-plane motions to the previous in-plane motions and to observe the resulting structural performance of various types of architectural glass. Thus, the curtain wall specimens in the current study were racked with motion components both …

Tape Casting For Lead Zirconate Titanate (Pzt) Multilayer Composites, Jane L. Cochran

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

Tape casting is a process for making thin flat ceramic pieces by using a scraping blade or "doctor blade" to evenly coat a smooth surface with a slip[ 1 ]. The slip is a mixture of powder, solvent, binder, and other organics which result in a paint like consistency after they are mixed.

The tapes is cast into thicknesses ranging from 1 to 50 mils on a smooth surface , which is usually made of Mylar, and left to dry.

Once the tape has dried it can be cut into several different shapes and sizes, and then fired to form …

Motorized Throttle Plate, John D. Crawford

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The objective of this project was to develop a throttle plate mechanism that can be used to simulate transient engine operation. This throttle plate was designed so as to regulate the quantity of air flow entering a Port Fuel Injected (PFI) spark ignition engine prior to the combustion of the fuel-air mixture. The throttle plate is linked to a data acquisition system in order to study the port fuel injection characteristics of the fuel-air mixture. This data acquisition system links the throttle plate angular position information to data obtained using a nonintrusive laser based diagnostic technique, therefore enabling the study …

Mechanical Properties Of Whisker-Reinforced Cordierite Glass Matrix Composites, John R. Dillingham

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The development of a whisker-reinforced ceramic matrix composite has been shown to be a reasonable method of achieving improved mechanical properties for ceramic materials. In this work a cordierite matrix was reinforced with 20vol% of silicon carbide whiskers. The mechanical properties of this composite were compared to those of the nonreinforced cordierite matrix. As would be expected, the whisker- reinforced matrix showed a significant improvement in mechanical properties.

The specimens used for testing were processed by hot-pressing in an argon atmosphere using a graphite die coated with boron nitride. Hot pressing was carried out at 950°C for the pure matrix …

Fiber Optic Microdeformation Sensors For Smart Structures, Lawrence S. Criscione

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

When optical fibers are stressed, the deformations at the core-cladding interface induce signal attenuation. Because of their durable physical properties (high melting point) optical fibers can be embedded into certain composite materials at the manufacturing stage. Stresses on the composite induces stresses on the embedded fiber. The amount of stress on the fiber, and thus the stress on the composite, can be determined by measuring the attenuation of a signal passing through the fiber. Force was applied to a single mode and a multimode fiber in a microbend inducing plate, and the attenuation this stress created was measured.

Experimental Investigation On The Longitudinal Stability Of A P51 Mustang Aircraft Model, Erich Fitzpatrick

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

This project involved the development of a test model of the P-51 Mustang aircraft and an experimental investigation of its stability. The model was developed to investigate the influence of the main horizontal tail parameters ( tail incidence, position of c.g., stabilizer moment arm,etc.)on the pitching moment around the aircraft’s center of gravity. To accomplish such a task, a test model was designed and fabricated with flat plate and airfoil wing configurations. The tail incidence of the flat plate stabilizer is adjustable over the entire range of positive and negative angles. A rechargeable, electric motor mounted in the fuselage adjusts …

Active Buckling Control Of Composite Plates, Bradley Wayne Gentelin

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The objective of the research project is to investigate the feasibility of using the rapidly growing technology of smart materials in actively controlling the buckling of laminated composite plates. Advanced composite structures are susceptible to structural instabilities under compression loadings, and the proper control of such instabilities is essential to the effective performance of the structures. The focus of the research activity is to perform an experimental study of using embedded piezoelectric materials for enhancing the critical buckling loads of laminated composite plates. The forces induced by the piezoelectric actuators under the applied voltage fields will be used to counterbalance …

Aerodynamics Of Solar Vehicles, Richard R. Pardun

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The purpose of this research project is to design the shape of a fully road worthy vehicle operating under nothing but the power of the sun. This vehicle was to meet all racing regulations of The Sunrayce and the World Solar Challenge. Because of the specific use of this vehicle, this project provides a chance to explore the aerodynamically ideal vehicle. Little attention has to be paid to practicality. The result is a very streamlined, highly aerodynamically efficient car, that is still stable and safe.

Solidification Modeling Of Centrifugal Casting, Stephen M. Lane

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

This paper describes the methodology used to estimate the solidification time of castings produced by processes in which normal thermal analysis cannot be used, such as centrifugal casting. This methodology utilizes the relationship between microstructure, in particular secondary dendrite arm spacing (SDAS), and freezing time. Using this method it is shown that position within the casting and casting geometry affect the SDAS and freezing time. However, the SDAS did not vary across the wall section due to differences in filling pattern compared to sand casting. Further research is necessary to determine filling pattern effects on microstructure.

Electrochemical Technique For Evaluating Surface Area Of A Treated Copper Foil, Gregory Lea

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

In order to increase the strength of copper foil bonded to a polymeric substrate material, a dendritic layer is electrodeposited onto the foil. Treating the foil in this manner causes its surface to be rough and porous, thus providing for better penetration of the adhesive and a greater surface area for bonding. The process is particularly helpful in the manufacturing of printed circuit cards, due to the added bond strength which greatly enhances the durability of the printed circuit cards.

Behavior Of Bubble Columns, Clint Davison

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

In the research program I studied different methods used in mixing gas and liquid in industrial reactors. I was introduced to the bubble column, the airlift reactor, and the bubbling stir tank through text reading, experimentation, and designing. From readings coming from the instrument and observation with my own eyes, I was able to learn much about the flow of particles in tanks such these.

The bubble column and the airlift reactor contain two sections of water flow (riser and downcomer). The riser area has a lower bulk density of fluid because of the rising air bubbles. The downcomer area …

Analysis Of A Thrust Vectoring Fighter Aircraft Using Realtime Flight Simulation, Clinton A. Thessen

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

A real-time flight simulation model based on the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet was created. This model was then modified with two different styles of thrust vectoring so that a study of each system's effect on the aircraft's pitch performance could be conducted in order to determine the best system. At present, work is proceeding on the development of active flight controls for the aircraft. After that effort is completed the thrust vectoring study can begin.

Two Methods For Attenuation Of Vibration In Structures, Kevin Mark Mcclendon

Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE)

The purpose of this report is to discuss methods of suppressing vibration in space trusses. The discussion is centered on the approach, structural attributes, and effectiveness of each method. One approach uses structural active members which are actuated to produce “anti-vibration” to cancel vibrations in the truss. The other method is to implement passive and active damping devices at the base of the space truss, where it will absorb vibrations by fluctuating the stiffness of the structures foundation.