Engineering Commons^™

On The Application Of Mechanical Vibration In Robotics-Assisted Soft Tissue Intervention, Iman Khalaji

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Mechanical vibration as a way of transmitting energy has been an interesting subject to study. While cyclic oscillation is usually associated with fatigue effect, and hence a detrimental factor in failure of structures and machineries, by controlled transmission of vibration, energy can be transferred from the source to the target. In this thesis, the application of such mechanical vibration in a few surgical procedures is demonstrated.

Three challenges associated with lung cancer diagnosis and treatment are chosen for this purpose, namely, Motion Compensation, tumor targeting in lung Needle Insertion and Soft Tissue Dissection:

1. A robotic solution is proposed …

Development And Integration Of Mems Based Inductive Sensors, Luyang Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Inductive sensors are one of the most widely used sensors especially in automotive. However, with the current PCB manufacture process, the large size of the sensor limits its usage in different applications. In this thesis, a novel method of fabricating bi-layer copper micro inductive sensor is demonstrated to solve the size issue. The two coil layers were built by UV LIGA process respectively, and a polyimide insulation film sandwiched in between. At the beginning, seeding layer was deposited on the substrate as electrode, and then the copper coil layer was created through electroplating in the patterned micromold. The coil was …

Optimal Sizing And Power Management Strategies Of Islanded Microgrids For Remote Electrification Systems, Faruk A. Bhuiyan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Over the past few years, electrification of remote communities with an efficient utilization of on-site energy resources has entered a new phase of evolution. However, the planning tools and studies for the remote microgrids are considered inadequate. Moreover, the existing techniques have not taken into account the impact of reactive power on component sizes. Thus, this thesis concentrates on optimal sizing design of an islanded microgrid (IMG), which is composed of renewable energy resources (RERs), battery energy storage system (BESS), and diesel generation system (DGS), for the purpose of electrifying off-grid communities. Owing to the utilization of both BESS and …

Design And Development Of Magneto-Rheological Actuators With Application In Mobile Robotics, Wenjun Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years, Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluids devices are widely studied and used for various purposes. Among these MR fluids devices, the MR actuator has attracted increasing attention for last two decades. An MR actuator is usually made of an active component (motor) and MR clutches. Compared with the regular actuators, the MR actuator features compliance due to the existence of MR fluids, which is commonly consider as benefits at the aspect of safety. On the other hand, the MR actuator has advantages on controllable bandwidth, torque-mass and torque-inertia ratios compared with the other compliant actuators.

In this study, a new …

Effects Of Surface Topographies On Heat And Fluid Flows, Hadi Vafadar Moradi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Responses of annular and planar flows to the introduction of grooves on the bounding surfaces have been analyzed. The required spectral algorithms based on the Fourier and Chebyshev expansions have been developed. The difficulties associated with the irregularities of the physical domain have been overcome using either the immersed boundary conditions (IBC) concept or the domain transformation method (DT).

Steady flows in annuli bounded by walls with longitudinal grooves have been studied. Analysis of pressure losses showed that the groove-induced changes can be represented as a superposition of a pressure drop due to a change in the average position of …