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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Dice: Blessed Or Cursed?, Warren Campbell, Cameron Miller, Xavier Simpson Jul 2023

Dice: Blessed Or Cursed?, Warren Campbell, Cameron Miller, Xavier Simpson

SEAS Faculty Publications

Every year, hundreds of millions of dice are manufactured and sold. Because of the impossibility of precise dimensional control and nonuniform density, none of these dice are fair. Polyhedral dice manufactured for role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons typically contain 4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, 10-sided, 12-sided, and 20-sided dice (D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, and D20). D20s are especially problematic. In 3000-roll tests of several D20s, only about one-quarter tested fair. In light of the inherent unfairness of most dice, we explored the possibility of using dice mechanics involving multiple dice to obtain fairer results. For D20s, summing three dice gave …


Asme Student Design Competition, Marcus Todd Apr 2019

Asme Student Design Competition, Marcus Todd

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

For the completion of my capstone project with the Western Kentucky University Honors College, the following document details my experience with the American Society of Mechanical Engineer (ASME) Student Design Competition. This project was completed in a two semester sequence through working with a team of four. One semester focusing primarily on the design and the other on fabrication and evaluation. The 2019 ASME competition was the Pick and Place Race. In this event, 46 teams were challenged to design and construct a device having the ability to pick up balls of varying size. Both the design and assembly process …


2019 Ieee Southeastcon Hardware Competition: A Systems Engineering Approach, Emily Sage Apr 2019

2019 Ieee Southeastcon Hardware Competition: A Systems Engineering Approach, Emily Sage

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Huntsville section invites college students to participate in their annual SoutheastCon Conference. Western Kentucky University sends a team of engineering students to the hardware competition, an opportunity for students to design and build autonomous robots. The 2019 hardware competition called for students to develop a robot that could collect and sort debris by color. This thesis outlines the project lifecycle of the WKU 2019 SoutheastCon robot with an emphasis on implemented systems engineering tools and techniques. Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach to project management that focuses on treating the overall project …


An Engineering Approach To Industrial Research And Development Of Pillows, Wesley Patterson Aug 2016

An Engineering Approach To Industrial Research And Development Of Pillows, Wesley Patterson

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Comfort during sleep, though taken for granted, involves a great amount of research and engineering. Few give it a second thought, but nearly one-third of a person’s life is spent with their head on a pillow, thus making them a point for increased quality. Having been approached by a tier-1 bedding manufacturer, a team of both mechanical and electrical engineers was been tasked with the goal of creating a valid research tool that the customer, Tempur-Sealy, will utilize in the company’s research and development of high-end pillows. The team sought to tackle this project utilizing tools and knowledge gained throughout …


Optimizing An Organizational Program For Halton Company, Chandler Clark Aug 2016

Optimizing An Organizational Program For Halton Company, Chandler Clark

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

A team of WKU Mechanical Engineering students is collaborating with Halton Company to create an organizational system for their plant. Each job performed at Halton is custom, leading to several different processes needing to be accounted for at once. The team is designing a program in Visual Studio that will be used to control the progression of the plant as well as store data to optimize future processes involved. Visual Studio will be implemented by summer of 2016 in order to give the team and company time to troubleshoot the program and insert optimizing options into the c ode of …


The Application Of Gage R&R Analysis In S Six Sigma Case Of Improving And Optimizing An Automotive Die Casting Product’S Measurement System, Qizheng Ren Oct 2015

The Application Of Gage R&R Analysis In S Six Sigma Case Of Improving And Optimizing An Automotive Die Casting Product’S Measurement System, Qizheng Ren

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

With the rapid development of automation technology in automotive manufacturing processes, massive and efficient production is a current trend. Therefore, measurement systems with accurate and automated measuring instruments are sought by automotive companies and suppliers. However, the problematic measuring instruments with unreliable accuracy and stability lead to erroneous measurements and wrong quality decisions that cause manufacturers huge profit losses. An effective method called “measurement system analysis” can be applied to define and eliminate erroneous measurements to ensure adequate reliability. An automotive transmission die casting parts supplier called company T was suffering a serious profit loss due to the erroneous measurements …


Adding Vision To A Quadrotor: A Design-Build-Test Adventure, Darren Tinker May 2014

Adding Vision To A Quadrotor: A Design-Build-Test Adventure, Darren Tinker

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Quadrotors are small and exceptionally agile vehicles with maneuverability that permits both indoor and outdoor flight. The vast majority of quadrotors are flown autonomously as drones or remotely by a human-operator. Applications of quadrotors range from commercial deliveries, to military and law reconnaissance as well as research tools for various fields. Our lab at Western Kentucky University built a quadrotor in 2013, and we have been exploring various modifications to refine its performance and various applications in which it could be productively employed. Recently, research has focused on the addition of a camera to add capabilities for first person view …


Reliability Of A Lunar Excavator, Amanda Michelle Huff Dec 2010

Reliability Of A Lunar Excavator, Amanda Michelle Huff

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Reliability Engineering is a field of engineering that studies the ability of a system (or component of a system) to function properly under specific conditions for a specific period of time; reliability analysis of such a system can take many forms. This thesis presents a quantified reliability study of a system that the author along with a team of Western Kentucky University Engineering students (designated Team ARTEMIS) designed, built, tested, and entered for competition in the Inaugural National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lunabotics Mining Competition in May 2010. A detailed quantitative analysis has been completed using both a Failure …


Sabin Collection (Mss 260), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2009

Sabin Collection (Mss 260), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 260. Letterbook containing correspondence of railroad engineer, Alpheus T. Sabin. Of particular note is information about railroad stations built in Louisville, Kentucky and Memphis, Tennessee. Also includes a store account book from Princeton, Kentucky, 1882-1885, and a small diary kept by Mrs. E.R. Sabin related to Princeton social life, 1890.