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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Pairing Electrostatic Levitation With Triboelectric Transduction For High-Performance Self-Powered Mems Sensors And Actuators, Mark Pallay, Alwathiqbellah I. Ibrahim, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian Sep 2019

Pairing Electrostatic Levitation With Triboelectric Transduction For High-Performance Self-Powered Mems Sensors And Actuators, Mark Pallay, Alwathiqbellah I. Ibrahim, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Scholarship

We demonstrate that an electrostatic levitation MEMS switch can be operated by applying mechanical pres- sure to a triboelectric generator. The toggling mechanism of the switch draws no current but requires a high actuating voltage, while the generator can supply a high voltage but only produces microwatts of power. The synergistic combination results in an entirely self-powered sensor and switch; the normally-closed MEMS switch can be toggled open by applying a threshold force to the generator without the need for any outside power or supplementary circuitry. A model of the MEMS switch and electrostatic force is validated with experimental data. …


Merging Parallel-Plate And Levitation Actuators To Enable Linearity And Tunability In Electrostatic Mems, Mark Pallay, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian Jul 2019

Merging Parallel-Plate And Levitation Actuators To Enable Linearity And Tunability In Electrostatic Mems, Mark Pallay, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Scholarship

In this study, a linear electrostatic MEMS actuator is introduced. The system consists of a MEMS cantilever beam with combined parallel-plate and electrostatic levitation forces. By using these two forcing methods simultaneously, the static response and natural frequency can be made to vary linearly with the voltage. The static response shows a linear increase of 90 nm/V and is maintained for more than 12μm of the tip displacement. The natural frequency shows a linear increase of 16 Hz/V and is maintained throughout a 2.9 kHz shift in the natural frequency. This wide range of linear displacement and frequency tunability is …


Estimating The Outer Ring Defect Size And Remaining Service Life Of Freight Railcar Bearings Using Vibration Signatures, Joseph Montalvo, Constantine Tarawneh, Jennifer Lima, Jonas Cuanang, Nancy De Los Santos Jul 2019

Estimating The Outer Ring Defect Size And Remaining Service Life Of Freight Railcar Bearings Using Vibration Signatures, Joseph Montalvo, Constantine Tarawneh, Jennifer Lima, Jonas Cuanang, Nancy De Los Santos

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The railroad industry currently utilizes two wayside detection systems to monitor the health of freight railcar bearings in service: The Trackside Acoustic Detection System (TADS™) and the wayside Hot-Box Detector (HBD). TADS™ uses wayside microphones to detect and alert the conductor of high-risk defects. Many defective bearings may never be detected by TADS™ since a high-risk defect is a spall which spans more than 90% of a bearing’s raceway, and there are less than 20 systems in operation throughout the United States and Canada. Much like the TADS™, the HBD is a device that sits on the side of the …


Structural Health Monitoring And Non-Destructive Inspection Of Composite And Metallic Structures, Asaad Qasim Migot Apr 2019

Structural Health Monitoring And Non-Destructive Inspection Of Composite And Metallic Structures, Asaad Qasim Migot

Theses and Dissertations

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Nondestructive Testing (NDT) techniques are being used as effective tools for investigating variety of civil, mechanical, and aerospace applications. In recent years, these techniques become such incredible tools for continuously monitoring of various structures. The aim of the dissertation work is to develop SHM and NDT methodologies for acoustic emission sources localization, damage detection and quantification in metallic and composite structures using a network of sensors, guided wave and developed imaging methods. This work is implemented through preparing metallic and composite specimens, setting up experiments, designing efficient networks of sensors, modeling guided wave interaction with …


A Tunable Electrostatic Mems Pressure Switch, Mark Pallay, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian Jan 2019

A Tunable Electrostatic Mems Pressure Switch, Mark Pallay, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Scholarship

We demonstrate a tunable air pressure switch. The switch detects when the ambient pressure drops below a threshold value and automatically triggers without the need for any computational overhead to read the pressure or trigger the switch. The switch exploits the significant fluid interaction of a MEMS beam undergoing a large oscillation from electrostatic levitation to detect changes in ambient pressure. If the oscillation amplitude near the resonant frequency is above a threshold level, dynamic pullin is triggered and the switch is closed. The pressure at which the switch closes can be tuned by adjusting the voltage applied to the …


Direct Write 3d Printing Of Functional Ceramics, Jorge Angel Diaz Jan 2019

Direct Write 3d Printing Of Functional Ceramics, Jorge Angel Diaz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Humidity sensors are used in many industries and are important for ensuring quality and safety. Ceramic sensors are preferred because of their quick response time, ability to withstand high temperatures and excellent Chemical and mechanical stability. The manufacturing world has been moving toward additive manufacturing which is a form of synthesizing 3D tangible layer by layer in witch minimal waste is produced. Additive manufacturing also is known as 3D printing has opened new possibilities to design engineers by giving them design freedom and access to the layers of a part to allow embedded sensors. There is a category of ceramics …


Modeling And Development Of The Dynamic Environmental Simulation Chamber (Desc) For Calibration Of Air Quality Monitoring Sensors, Filiz Kazan Jan 2019

Modeling And Development Of The Dynamic Environmental Simulation Chamber (Desc) For Calibration Of Air Quality Monitoring Sensors, Filiz Kazan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The thesis describes the development steps for the dynamic environmental simulation chamber (DESC) and carbon dioxide sensor calibration by using DESC. The sensors are Figaro, COZIR and K30 CO2 sensors