Engineering Commons^™

2012 Manufacturers Safety Management System Pilot Project Report Design And Manufacturing Organizations, Jeff Duven, Linda Navarro, David Hempe, Alan J. Stolzer

Publications

In October, 2009, the Aircraft Certification Service (AIR) chartered a team to conduct the Manufacturers' Safety Management Systems (MSMS) pilot project. The pilot project began in January, 2011, and encourages voluntary implementation of Safety Management Systems (SMS) among aviation Design and Manufacturing (D&M) organizations in order to allow the FAA to assess how to provide oversight of these systems. Eleven companies representing the breadth of organizations that AIR oversees participated.

The MSMS pilot project culminated in December, 2012. Information, results, and lessons learned from the pilot project were captured via the MSMS Teams' final deliverable to AIR-150. The report was …

We Did Our Part: The Story Of A World War Ii Aaf Air Transport C-47 Pilot In The South West Pacific, Kay Nehring

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Hear the story of Lt Charles J. Nehring, as told by his daughter, who went from selling shoes in N. Dakota to dropping paratroopers on Corregidor. He served with the 39th SQ of the 317th TCG from ‘42 to ‘45 and shot rare 16mm color film of his daily activities and flights. Kay narrates the film and reads from his letters home, as well as brings a collection of his WW II things for viewing. A unique and personal look at the war.

Strain Rate And Orientation Dependencies Of The Strength Of Single Crystalline Copper Under Compression, Virginie Dupont, Timothy C. Germann

Aerospace Engineering - Daytona Beach

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are used to model the compression under uniaxial strain of copper single crystals of different orientations at various temperatures and strain rates. Uniaxial strain is used because of the close resemblance of the resulting stress state with the one behind a shock front, while allowing a control of parameters such as strain rate and temperature to better understand the behavior under complex dynamic shock conditions. Our simulations show that for most orientations, the yield strength of the sample is increased with increasing strain rate. This yield strength is also dependent on the orientation of the sample, …

A (Declassified) History Of Military Drones, Stephen Rayleigh

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or drones, are said to be the newest technology of contemporary warfare, but the military's use of drones spans the last 100 years. Hear the riveting story of the numerous secret UAV programs around the world, starting with the Sperry Aerial Torpedo Project in 1918 (consulted by Orville Wright), the German cruise missile program, American remote controlled bombers in WWII, the Firebee recon drone used in Vietnam, Israel's highly successful UAV program, and finally the coming of age of UAV's in Operation Desert Storm.

General Aviation Weather Encounter Case Studies, John M. Lanicci, Massoud Bazargan, Daniel Halperin, Scott Shappell, Jaclyn Baron, Rebecca Iden, Carla Hackworth, Kali Holcomb

School of Graduate Studies - Daytona Beach

This study presents a compilation of 24 cases involving general aviation (GA) pilots’ weather encounters over the continental U.S. The project team interviewed pilots who had experienced a weather encounter, and we examined their backgrounds, flight experience, and weather encounter details. Results from meteorological data analysis for each weather encounter were consistent with findings of larger GA weather accident studies in terms of the types of hazards encountered and flight phase during which the encounters occurred. Investigation of pilot weather products and the sources from which they were obtained revealed a lack of uniformity of pre-flight data sources and underutilization …

Multi-Color Cavity Ringdown Based Detection Method And Apparatus, Scott W. Reeve, Susan Davis Allen

Mechanical Engineering - Daytona Beach

A multi-color cavity ringdown based spectrometer system is housed in a light tight enclosure to detect the presence of trace quantities of gas phase molecules emanating from a subject, explosives, drugs, or hazardous materials. A method is also disclosed for simultaneous real time detection of gas phase molecules emanating from explosives, drugs, hazardous materials, a subject's breath skin or bodily fluid.

The Influence Of Automation On Aviation Accident And Fatality Rates: 2000-2010, Nicholas A. Koeppen

Publications

The purpose of this project is to evaluate if technological advances and implementation of automation have produced a decrease in the number and severity of accidents in commercial aviation over the last decade. To accomplish this evaluation historical commercial aviation accident data from 2000 to 2010 will be examined. Commercial fixed wing and rotary wing data will be evaluated. No aviation incident data will be collected; the project will be limited in scope to commercial aviation accidents. Accidents highlighting major deficiencies involving automation will be discussed in detail. To further support the projects purpose, emphasis will be given to evaluate …

Assessing Technological Literacy Of Middle School Students, Lawrence E. Whitman, Mandy C. Phelps, Karen V. Reynolds, Barbara S. Chaparro

Publications

Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is a rigorous and relevant pre-engineering curriculum implemented in middle schools and high schools throughout the United States. PLTW has a hands-on approach using activities and project-based learning. The College of Engineering at Wichita State University has partnered with three local school districts to implement the PLTW program to increase interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This study begins to assess the impact of the PLTW program on student perceptions and attitudes toward engineering and technology as part of an ongoing three-year assessment. A pre- and post-assessment were administered to middle school students …

A Knowledge-Based Clinical Toxicology Consultant For Diagnosing Single Exposures, Joel D. Schipper, Douglas D. Dankel Ii, A. Antonio Arroyo, Jay L. Schauben

Publications

Objective: Every year, toxic exposures kill twelve hundred Americans. To aid in the timely diagnosis and treatment of such exposures, this research investigates the feasibility of a knowledge-based system capable of generating differential diagnoses for human exposures involving unknown toxins.

Methods: Data mining techniques automatically extract prior probabilities and likelihood ratios from a database managed by the Florida Poison Information Center. Using observed clinical effects, the trained system produces a ranked list of plausible toxic exposures. The resulting system was evaluated using 30,152 single exposure cases. In addition, the effects of two filters for refining diagnosis based on …

Hybrid Course Design: Leading A New Direction In Learning Programming Languages, Lulu Sun, Matthew Kindy, Caroline Cecile Marcelle Liron, Christopher Grant, Shirley Waterhouse

Publications

“Introduction to Computing for Engineers” is a programming course emphasizing problem solving. The lack of practice time, in addition to the algorithm-centric nature of programming, results in an inadequate comprehension of course material. In the fall of 2010, three faculty members created and implemented online activities consisting of video lecture slides, and mini on-line quizzes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to give students more “hands-on” learning (rather than expecting them to absorb content through lecture). Students do online lecture study by themselves, then come to the lab to practice on the following day with the instructor and teaching assistant. In the …

Even Moderate Visual Impairments Degrade Drivers' Ability To See Pedestrians At Night, Joanne M. Wood, Richard A. Tyrell, Alex Chaparro, Ralph P. Marszalek, Trent P. Carberry, Byoung Sun Chu

Publications

PURPOSE. To determine the effect of moderate levels of refractive blur and simulated cataracts on nighttime pedestrian conspicuity in the presence and absence of headlamp glare.

METHODS. The ability to recognize pedestrians at night was measured in 28 young adults (M ¼ 27.6 years) under three visual conditions: normal vision, refractive blur, and simulated cataracts; mean acuity was 20/40 or better in all conditions. Pedestrian recognition distances were recorded while participants drove an instrumented vehicle along a closed road course at night. Pedestrians wore one of three clothing conditions and oncoming headlamps were present for 16 participants and absent for …

The History Of Air Traffic Control, Rose Marie Kern

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Did you know that the United States Aviation program began as a subdivision of the Federal Bureau of Lighthouses? Hear the fascinating story of the steps taken to bring organization to to the wild, new and exciting world of aviation at the beginning of the 20th Century. Kern will also discuss how various branches of the ATC came into being as well as some future plans of the FAA.

Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, John Brophy, Fred Culick, Louis Friedman, Pedro Llanos, Et Al.

Publications

This report describes the results of a study sponsored by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) to investigate the feasibility of identifying, robotically capturing, and returning an entire Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) to the vicinity of the Earth by the middle of the next decade. The KISS study was performed by people from Ames Research Center, Glenn Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Johnson Space Center, Langley Research Center, the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard University, the Naval Postgraduate School, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Southern …

Teaching Higher On Bloom's Taxonomy: Experience In Introduction To Graphical Communications Course, Lulu Sun, Christopher Grant

Publications

Introduction to Graphical Communications is designed to familiarize the student with the basic principles of engineering drawing, to improve three dimensional visualization skills, and to teach the fundamentals of a computer aided design program. Much of the instruction is focused on knowledge and comprehension, low levels of Bloom's taxonomy. However, the students' ability to use this knowledge and comprehension to explore real engineering design is unknown. This paper includes the implementation of Bloom's taxonomy in the Introduction to Graphical Communications course, and shows how students are moved up Bloom's taxonomy by including a group final project into the course. Students …

Useful Field Of View Predicts Driving In The Presence Of Distracters, Joanne M. Wood, Alex Chaparro, Philippe Lacherez, Louise Hickson

Publications

Purpose. The Useful Field of View (UFOV®) test has been shown to be highly effective in predicting crash risk among older adults. An important question which we examined in this study is whether this association is due to the ability of the UFOV to predict difficulties in attention-demanding driving situations that involve either visual or auditory distracters.

Methods. Participants included 92 community-living adults (mean age 73.6 +- 5.4 years; range 65– 88 years) who completed all three subtests of the UFOV involving assessment of visual processing speed (subtest 1), divided attention (subtest 2), and selective attention (subtest 3); driving safety …

Regional Jet Aircraft Competitiveness: Challenges And Opportunities, Tamilla Curtis, Dawna L. Rhoades

Publications

The Purpose of the Study is to investigate the current trends in the aviation industry in regards to regional jets and to examine country-level factors that can potentially explain the number of Embraer and Bombardier regional jet deliveries. Possible factors include GDP, price of crude oil, prior aircraft deliveries and the land area of receiving RJ countries.

Building A Wright Flyer - By Committee, Fred E.C. Culick

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Hear the story of the earliest aircraft from 1895 to 1908 and how the Wright Brothers successfully built the first airplane but couldn’t build the second one!

On The Stability Of A Microstructure Model, Mihhail Berezovski, Arkadi Berezovski

Publications

Abstract

The asymptotic stability of solutions of the Mindlin-type microstructure model for solids is analyzed in the paper. It is shown that short waves are asymptotically stable even in the case of a weakly non-convex free energy dependence on microdeformation.

Research highlights

The Mindlin-type microstructure model cannot describe properly short wave propagation in laminates. A modified Mindlin-type microstructure model with weakly non-convex free energy resolves this discrepancy. It is shown that the improved model with weakly non-convex free energy is asymptotically stable for short waves.

Zeppelins Over London, Ron Anderson

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Hear the story of the first strategic bombing campaign in history. The target was the civilian populated areas of London in World War I. Come on board a giant Zeppelin of the Imperial German Navy Air Service and learn what these raids did, or did not accomplish, from Ron Anderson, local zeppelin historian.

Generation Of Four Dimensional Grid Of Probabilistic Hazards For Use By Decision Support Tools, Ian A. Wilson

Publications

A new method and system for generating probabilities of objective values of hazards as a fine granularity grid in four dimensions (three spatial dimensions plus time) to be used by decision support and visualization tools. Utilizing the pro­posed system, proxies for hazard data received at different times and in different formats may be used as input data to a grid of intelligent software agents which generate a four dimensional matrix of probabilities of objective values of hazards. The method allows for proxies and/or subjective information on hazards that may arrive asynchronously and with coarse temporal and spatial accuracy to be …

Computational Analysis Of Hybrid Norwood Circulation With Distal Aortic Arch Obstruction And Reverse Blalock-Taussig Shunt, Andres Ceballos, I. Ricardo Argueta-Morales, Eduardo Divo, Ruben Osorio, Christopher A. Caldarone, Alain J. Kassab, William M. Decampli

Mechanical Engineering - Daytona Beach

BACKGROUND: The hemodynamics characteristics of the hybrid Norwood (HN) procedure differ from those of the conventional Norwood and are not fully understood. We present a multi-scale model of HN circulation to understand local hemodynamics and effects of aortic arch stenosis and a reverse Blalock-Taussig shunt (RBTS) on coronary and carotid perfusion. METHODS: Four 3-dimensional models of four HN anatomic variants were developed, with and without 90% distal preductal arch stenosis and with and without a 4-mm RBTS. A lumped parameter model of the circulation was coupled to a local 3-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model. Outputs from the lumped parameter model …

Computational Fluid Dynamics In Congenital Heart Disease, William M. Decampli, I. Ricardo Argueta-Morales, Eduardo Divo, Alain J. Kassab

Mechanical Engineering - Daytona Beach

Computational fluid dynamics has been applied to the design, refinement, and assessment of surgical procedures and medical devices. This tool calculates flow patterns and pressure changes within a virtual model of the cardiovascular system. In the field of paediatric cardiac surgery, computational fluid dynamics is being used to elucidate the optimal approach to staged reconstruction of specific defects and study the haemodynamics of the resulting anatomical configurations after reconstructive or palliative surgery. In this paper, we review the techniques and principal findings of computational fluid dynamics studies as applied to a few representative forms of congenital heart disease.

A New Control System For Left Ventricular Assist Devices Based On Patient-Specific Physiological Demand, George Faragallah, Yu Wan, Eduardo Divo, Marwan Simaan

Mechanical Engineering - Daytona Beach

A left ventricular assist device (LVAD) is a mechanical pump that helps patients with a heart failure (HF) condition. This pump works in parallel to the ailing heart and provides a continuous flow from the weak left ventricle to the ascending aorta. The current supplied to the pump motor controls the flow of blood. A new feedback control system is developed to automatically adjust the pump motor current to provide the blood flow required by the level of activity of the patient. The systemic vascular resistance (RS) is the only undeterministic variable parameter in a patient-specific model and also a …

An Inverse Pod-Rbf Network Approach To Parameter Estimation In Mechanics, Craig A. Rogers, Alain Kassab, Eduardo Divo, Ziemowit Ostrowski, Ryszard Bialecki

Mechanical Engineering - Daytona Beach

An inverse approach is formulated using proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) integrated with a trained radial basis function (RBF) network to estimate various physical parameters of a specimen with little prior knowledge of the system. To generate the truncated POD-RBF network utilized in the inverse problem, a series of direct solutions based on FEM, BEM or exact analytical solutions are used to generate a data set of temperatures or deformations within the system or body, each produced for a unique set of physical parameters. The data set is then transformed via POD to generate an orthonormal basis to accurately solve for …

The Allen Telescope Array Search For Electrostatic Discharges On Mars, Marin M. Anderson, Andrew P.V. Siemion, William C. Barott, Geoffery C. Bower, Gregory T. Delory, Imke De Pater, Dan Werthimer

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Daytona Beach

The Allen Telescope Array was used to monitor Mars between 2010 March 9 and June 2, over a total of approximately 30 hr, for radio emission indicative of electrostatic discharge. The search was motivated by the report from Ruf et al. of the detection of non-thermal microwave radiation from Mars characterized by peaks in the power spectrum of the kurtosis, or kurtstrum, at 10 Hz, coinciding with a large dust storm event on 2006 June 8. For these observations, we developed a wideband signal processor at the Center for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research. This 1024 channel spectrometer calculates …

Thrust Vector Control Of An Upper-Stage Rocket With Multiple Propellant Slosh Modes, Mahmut Reyhanoglu, Jaime Rubio Hervas

Physical Sciences - Daytona Beach

“The thrust vector control problem for an upper-stage rocket with propellant slosh dynamics is considered. The control inputs are defined by the gimbal deflection angle of a main engine and a pitching moment about the center of mass of the spacecraft. The rocket acceleration due to the main engine thrust is assumed to be large enough so that surface tension forces do not significantly affect the propellant motion during main engine burns. A multi-mass-spring model of the sloshing fuel is introduced to represent the prominent sloshing modes. A nonlinear feedback controller is designed to control the translational velocity vector and …

Wave Propagation And Dispersion In Microstructured Solids, Arkadi Berezovski, Juri Engelbrecht, Mihhail Berezovski

Publications

A series of numerical simulations is carried on in order to understand the accuracy of dispersive wave models for microstructured solids. The computations are performed by means of the finite-volume numerical scheme, which belongs to the class of wave-propagation algorithms. The dispersion effects are analyzed in materials with different internal structures: microstructure described by micromorphic theory, regular laminates, laminates with substructures, etc., for a large range of material parameters and wavelengths.

Open-Ended Project Learning Experience In Graphical Communication, Lulu Sun, Christopher Grant

Publications

This paper includes the implementation of Bloom’s taxonomy in the introduction to graphical communication course and shows how students are moved up Bloom’s taxonomy by changing previous guided individual final project to open-ended projects. Instead of following the instructor’s direction to complete the model design, students are required to research the product they want to design, and build the model by themselves. The open-ended projects enable and challenge students to work on higher level of Bloom’s taxonomy by emphasizing design creativity, exploring real engineering design problem, and enhancing their oral and written skills.

High Tech High Touch: Lessons Learned From Project Haiti 2011, Yan Tang, Marc Compere, Yung Lun Wong, Jared Anthony Coleman, Matthew Charles Selkirk

Publications

In this paper, we will share our experiences and lessons learned from a design project for providing clean water to a Haitian orphanage (Project Haiti 2011). Supported by funds from a renewable energy company and the university president’s office, five engineering students and two faculty members from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University successfully designed and installed a solar powered water purification system for an orphanage located in Chambellan, Haiti. This paper discusses the unique educational experiences gained from unusual design constraints, such as ambiguity of existing facilities due to limited communication, logistics of international construction at a remote village location, and cross-cultural …

Multi-Disciplinary Hands-On Desktop Learning Modules And Modern Pedagogies, Bernard J. Van Wie, David B. Thiessen, Marc Compere, Ximena Toro, Jennifer C. Adam, Et Al.

Publications

Our team’s research focuses on fundamental problems in undergraduate education in terms of how to expand use of well researched, yet still “new”, teaching pedagogies of ‘sensing’ or ‘hands-on’, ‘active’ and ‘problem-based learning’ within engineering courses. It is now widely accepted that traditional lectures ARE NOT best for students – yet that is what the community almost universally does.

To address this issue we are developing new Desktop Learning Modules (DLMs) that contain miniaturized processes with a uniquely expandable electronic system to contend with known sensor systems/removable cartridges, as well as, unknown expansions to the project. We have shown that …