Engineering Commons^™

Modeling Of A Meat Cooking Process For On-Line Monitoring And Control, Oralia Garcia

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

A heat transfer model is developed to predict cooking time of meat patties given the initial temperature of meat, oven temperature, and meat properties to monitor and control a cooking process on-line. Experiments were performed to find the cause of variability in cooked weight and raw temperature effects in forming and final cooked temperature. Advanced charting techniques concluded that only common causes of variability were present in the process. Thermal conductivity experiments were performed to determine the thermal conductivity of meat (k), which was compared with the properties of meat published in literature to validate the experiment. Oven design analysis …

Optimal Design Of Beams Undergoing Harmonic Bending And Torsion Using Finite Elements, Arnoldo Garcia

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In this study, the objective is to determine the natural frequency of an Euler-Bernoulli beam with an intermediate mass and inertial component. The beam is studied with fixed and relaxed end conditions. The beam is also modeled with an intermediate support. The models are then compared with an approximate closed form solution for the natural frequency. Results show that the closed form equation is within 2% percent when compared to the exact natural frequency equation.

The beam is modeled with a finite element software. The goal is to minimize the weight of a beam structure subject to harmonic excitation. Results …