Engineering Commons^™

Optimization Of An Airboat Design, Adam P. Leppek

Honors Theses

Airboats are a common recreational vehicle in southern regions of the United States. A functional prototype of an airboat design was constructed utilizing the manufacturing processes and components available to gain knowledge and experience with the design process. The hull, rudder framework, seating structure, propeller shroud, drive train, and drive unit framework were fabricated at a machine shop. Remaining components were purchased, such as the engine, rudders, and propeller. Welders, mills, lathes, band saws, grinders, hydraulic presses, and power tools were employed in the construction. Drive train and drive unit framework was designed and analyzed using RomaxDesigner, a simulation software …

Design Of A Near-Constant Force Spring For Orthopedic Implants, Christopher Hartman, Paul Rotarius

Honors Theses

The design and testing of a spring assembly for the attachment of an orthopedic implant is presented. The assembly is intended to supply a constant compressive force of approximately 800 lb. at the bone-implant interface, while exhibiting insensitivity to changes in the displacement of the clamping device. This near-constant force will aid in-growth of bone tissue at the implant surface. This constant compressive force was ultimately not attained due to the packaging dimensions and materials available. However, significant improvement was made upon the current design in use by lowering the spring constant around 800 lb.

The final assembly fits in …

Site Design Of A Four-Story 11,705 Sq-Ft Class A Office Building, Britney Richmond, Allison Porrett, Kimberly Warners

Honors Theses

This senior capstone design project was a two-semester long venture that began last fall with the formation of the team, the selection of the sponsored project, and the conclusion of a proposal. The purpose of the proposal was for the senior design team to display a thorough understanding of the project's scope of work and to declare the deliverables agreed upon by the team. The team began contact with the sponsor, Hurley &Stewart, prior to beginning the proposal writing in order to gain more details about the project at hand and to ask any questions. The team chose to add …

Cooling Tunnel Optimization, Trisha Janicki, Jason Thomas

Honors Theses

The goal of this senior design project was to design an Excel spreadsheet which would model a cooling tunnel at the production facility for Kellogg. This model takes the inputs from the operator, the ambient conditions, and the product going through the model and shows exactly what is happening within the tunnel. Once the model was built, an economic analysis was done based on the normal operations versus the increased efficiency of the cooling tunnel. This economic comparison showed that if the throughput of the cooling tunnel was increased by 17.6%, the cost of running the chiller, which is the …

Trials Bike Frame Concept, David Boboltz, Rob Harmer, Caleb Vanderveen

Honors Theses

Development of a Concept Trials Frame was a mechanical engineering design project that developed a new bicycle frame that has the strength and durability to be used for trials bike riding. The scope of the project was placed solely on the bicycle's frame. Current frames were analyzed based on their strength, durability, stiffness, weight, and appearance. These factors were ranked for importance and became the performance targets for the new frame. Several designs that utilize elastic strain energy to increase performance were brainstormed. Following SolidWorks modeling, equivalent impact loads were calculated using several analytical methods. These loads were then applied …

Process Color Profiling: Syncing A Digital Printer With An Offset Press, Kate Blout, Laura Kraft

Honors Theses

PowerPoint presentation discussing color as it applies to ink and printing devices. Part of the project involved creating a color management system to allow the WMU print lab to print color roofs on its digital printer that would match the output of the Shinohara offset press.

Off Campus Furniture Retail Development, Dan E. White, Richard D. Mccarthy, Christopher T. Cowgill

Honors Theses

The development of a 3.3 acre parcel of land at 5110 S. Westnedge, City of Portage, Kalamazoo County, Michigan is being proposed by Cowgill and Associates Inc. This will be a commercial development project with Off Campus Furniture taking occupancy after construction is complete. The building will be two stories with 57,500 square feet of usable floor space. All design was completed in accordance to the City of Portage, and the Michigan building code with design being done in accordance to ACI Code 318-05. The development includes but is not limited to site work, including storm water runoff and design, …

Inertial Navigation System, Michael Calabrese Jr., David Engblom, Aaron Fleckenstein

Honors Theses

Accelerometer-based inertial navigation systems present an inexpensive alternative to gyroscope and global positioning navigation systems. An array of accelerometers comprises the basic design of the inertial navigation system. The position of the device can be continuously updated based on the previous device location and measurements of the device acceleration. There are fewer moving parts in an accelerometer-based system than in a gyroscopic device, and it is free of the earth bound constraints of a global positioning system. The prototype wirelessly interfaces with a data-collection system, which processes the data and provides a graphical display of the trajectory traveled.

Two accelerometer …

Telerobotic Controller, Michael Fewless, George Slater, Steve Waldron

Honors Theses

Atelerobotic system allows a user to interact with an environment indirectly. Our project successfully creates a telerobotic environment between the Phantom 1.5 controller and the UMI RTX robotic arm. Utilizing the haptic features of the Phantom controller, a more realistic interaction was created between the telerobotic system and the user by providing sensory feedback. As the user manipulates the hand-controlled Phantom device, signals are sent via a parallel port to the personal computer. A real-time WIN32 application, utilizing the GHOST SDK library, reads the position of the Phantom controller's coordinates and calculates the corresponding motor positions of the UMI RTXrobotic …

Introduction To Mechanical Engineering, Lorik Abdullai, Joseph R. Dunn

Honors Theses

I can still remember back in high school when I was faced with a decision thousands of students experience every year: What college was I going to choose, and what major was I going to study? It seemed like every time I saw friends and relatives they asked me that question. Meanwhile, I knew that going to a major university would give me more choices in case I changed majors. As it turned out, Western Michigan University was the best package for me when I considered the financial aid, the program ofmy major, location of the university, and its friendly …

Electron Vacuum Tube Guitar Amplifier, Erik Widman

Honors Theses

This project consisted of designing and fabricating an electron vacuum tube guitar amplifier. Vacuum tubes have become obsolete in modern electronics due to their size, cost, and inefficiency. However, vacuum tubes are still commonly used in guitar amplifiers. Vacuums tube's nonlinear amplifying characteristics are ideal for distorting a signal. Hence vacuum tubes are used in distorting guitar amplifiers commonly used in rock music. While guitar amplifiers consist of many subsystems, the focus of this senior design report is the distorting preamplifier.

Imagine a guitar signal as a pure sine wave (although in reality the signal is a complicated series of …

Flexible Electrical And Software Programmable Transceivers For Wireless Communications (Feast Ii), Mike Ellinger, James Etters, Eric Juntunen

Honors Theses

Flexible Electrical and Software Programmable Transceivers (FEAST) is a project aimed at advancing both research and educational opportunities in wireless communications. The development of high speed analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters has enabled the modulation/demodulation of communications signals via real-time data processing. These "software radios" will allow greater flexibility in the reception and transmission of wireless signals. The FEAST wireless transceiver is such a system consisting of analog RF signal down converters and upconverters, high speed analog-to-digital and digital-toanalog converters, hardware digital signal processing IC's and real time software signal processing.

Phase II of the project (FEASTII) project focuses is on …

Reducing Machine Downtime Through Improved Material Flow, Robyn Hoenle, Walter Teamer, Steve Toner

Honors Theses

The goal of a local manufacturer of garment and craft patterns is to maximize its profits. To achieve this goal, several processes within the plant must work efficiently independently and in conjunction with each other. In doing so, some of the issues that must be addressed include maximizing efficiency, reducing downtime, simplifying process layouts, and combining processes to ultimately provide a quality product to the customer. The manufacturer is presently experiencing excessive downtime in the packaging area because of excessive material handling. The task of the project team was to work in conjunction with the manufacturer to analyze and evaluate …

The Pratt & Whitney 4060: Power For The Future, Gregory Sumner

Honors Theses

The Pratt & Whitney 4000 engine platform is considered the most economical turbofan engine in its class. It is advertised as providing the most efficient service and the most reliability for air carriers. United Airlines utilizes the company's engines. The paper begins with basic turbine engine theory and moves on to engine classifications, where the Pratt & Whitney 4060 is introduced. The systems are covered in detail. Maintenance areas of service and inspections are described to show how personnel may interact with the computers. Finally, a description of activities during the author's internship describe the interesting facets of a semester …

Telemetric Torque Measurement System, Jason Joseph, Francisco Sinta, Jeff Williams

Honors Theses

The Telemetric Torque Measurement System(TTMS) was designed to measure the torque produced by a snowmobile engine. The design of the TTMS was refined and modified in stages, leading to the final design. The TTMS consists of two basic sections: the transmitter section and the frequency demodulator section. The transmitter section effectively measures the torque on a snowmobilejack-shaft. The torque signal is converted into a voltage which is then fed into a voltage to frequency converter and converted into an audio tone. This tone is broadcast in the FM broadcast band via an FM transmitter. An FM receiver then receives the …

Design Of A Miniature Hydraulic Power Unit, Ryan D. Bruneau

Honors Theses

The need for a newly designed miniature hydraulic power unit has received the attention of Parker-Hannifin Hydraulic Pump/Motor Division. The current power unit is no longer marketable due to the associated costs and its relative size. As a result, a miniature hydraulic power unit has been designed, the culmination to the engineering curriculum at Western Michigan University. In order to increase the overall marketability and to reduce production costs, a transparent plastic reservoir has been incorporated into the design. An appropriate polymer has been chosen to meet the design requirements and finite element analysis has been used to verify the …

Patient Flow Through A Hospital Emergency Department, Mark Czuk

Honors Theses

Bronson Methodist Hospital, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is committed to the goal of providing comprehensive health care to the people of Southwestern Michigan. Bronson is actively involved in continually improving their services in order to better serve the community. This process of continuous improvement covers all hospital operations including the Emergency Department. Through studying the Emergency Department process, and how the department interacts with other departments in the hospital, improvements can be made which can lead to a better service provided to the community.

Design Of A Vibration Excitation Device, Brian Wallace, Brandon Dawe

Honors Theses

A vibration excitation source has been designed for use in beam and plate vibration laboratory demonstrations. This source is capable of providing single frequency excitations below 160 cycles per second (Hz). Since it will be used in a variety of experiments by students, ease of use and quick setup time have been major considerations of design. Performance of this source has been evaluated and will be presented along with one example application.

Wobbling Gear Drivetrain For Cordless Screwdriver, David K. Kedrowski, Scott P. Slimak

Honors Theses

Manufacturers of cordless screwdrivers use two planetary gear trains in series to reduce speed and multiply torque from a small electric motor. Alternately, a nutating gear drivetrain has the potential to create comparable speed reductions and torque multiplications. To apply nutating gear theory to a cordless screwdriver drivetrain, a study of spur gears, planetary gear reducers, bevel gears, and the theory of nutation was undertaken. Finally, a nutating design was proposed. The advantages of a nutating gear drivetrain over a conventional planetary gear train include: a decreased number of drivetrain parts, an ability to use lower-strength gear materials, a higher …

Using Computerized Cinematography To Develop A Predictive Model Relating Muscle Stress And Wrist Movement, Joseph M. Kaczmar

Honors Theses

Workers in many jobs are required to perform the same tasks day after day. As a result of this repetitious work, many employees are developing what is know as Cumulative Trauma Disorders (CTD). There has been much research done on ways to prevent these disorders. Cumulative Trauma Disorders involving the wrist are of special concern. Repetitive motions and awkward positions of the wrist are a major cause of CTD's in the wrist. One such factor dealing with the posture is the angle between the hand and the forearm. In order to help limit the affects of CTD's of the wrist, …

Particle Size And Velocity Measurements In Two Phase Flows Using Laser Doppler Velocimetry, Joseph Parker

Honors Theses

Laser Doppler Velocimetry is used in fluid mechanics to measure the velocity of particles in fluid flows. A small particle exhibits motion closely corresponding to the fluid behavior because of its ability to follow high frequency flow fluctuations. Large particles do not follow the flow field precisely but represent a second phase. This project used LDV to measure the size and velocity of particles in two phase flows by computer analysis of the Doppler signal.

The Lb Wind-Tunnel, Larry Bennett

Honors Theses

A small subsonic wind-tunnel has been developed for further understanding of aerodynamic principles. This tunnel is small enough to be used on table tops so the student can get first-hand experience. The tunnel's working section is a clear plexiglass tube for easy viewing and provides ample work room. The biggest advantage of this tunnel is that it can be built in the average home workshop for approximately $60.00.