Engineering Commons^™

Integrated Under-Deck Storage Unit Solutions For The Basic Utility Vehicle, Madeline Barone, Hunter Bogart, Cindy Carrion, Ethan Piacenti

Scholar Week 2016 - present

There is an urgent need to maximize storage usage on the Basic Utility Vehicle (BUV) that is used in Africa by the BUV ministry. Drivers have no place to store personal belongings and items that should stay with the BUV throughout the day. This project aims to find a solution that is in the market and figure out how to adapt it to the BUV. The final product must meet the design criteria given by the BUV ministry as is or with additional features added on to it. By providing an efficient storage solution, there will be a positive impact …

Adjustable Load On Cvt Driven Project, Elijah Saxton, Colin Mcconnell, Trent Bolek, Caleb Malboeuf, Alexander Rawson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

SAE Baja, also known as Baja SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers Baja), is a series of collegiate design competitions organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). These competitions challenge teams of students to design, build, and race off-road vehicles that can withstand rough terrain and perform in various dynamic events. The objective of this Senior Design Project is to design, manufacture, and test an adjustable driven Continuous Variable Transmission (CVT) pulley to adjust the preload on the spring. This will allow easier adjustment on the CVT preload at smaller increments. This design could be used for future Zips Baja …

Preparing For V2x Deployment: Evaluating Current Anonymity Implementations, And Developing A Framework For Gauging Roadside Unit Networkability, Daniel Arnaudov Sharp

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis we answer two questions relating to the impending deployment of V2X. We answer, "What is the state of current privacy measures implemented to prevent tracking and promote anonymity?" We answer this by showing that tracking methods used to circumvent changing IDs are possible. We also show through conservative calculations that this problem will not go away on its own and requires direct effort. We also answer, "Is the available production V2X hardware ready for scalable deployment?" To do this we develop a framework for evaluating RSUs and many of their core functions related to deployment, scalability, and …

Saver: Surface Autonomous Vehicle For Emergency Rescue, Lucas Je Sandsor, Michelangelo Coltelli, Brian Wong, Sebastion Rivero, Kobe Hayashi

Mechanical Engineering

The design, fabrication, and testing of an unmanned surface vehicle for the NASA Micro-G NExT SAVER challenge. This device features a radio direction finding phase array to autonomously navigate to an emergency distress beacon to deliver emergency supplies.

Assessment Of Bridge Pier Response To Fire, Vehicle Impact, And Air Blast, Chen Fang, Qusai Alomari, Daniel G. Linzell

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Highway bridges exposed to intentional or unintentional fire followed by combined vehicle impact and air blast are at risk of significant damage and, possibly, collapse. Limited studies examining the complex effects of these extreme demands on bridge support elements and parametrizing their response and damage are found in the open literature. Research that is presented is part of an ongoing numerical investigation examining round, multi-column, reinforced concrete (RC), bridge pier behavior subject to multi-hazard scenarios involving fire, vehicle impact, and air blast. Detailed nonlinear finite element analysis models of single columns and multi-column piers supported by a pile foundation system …

Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge, Bryce Towne, Ethan Andrews, Carter Moore, Andrew Sobel

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge is a competition held by the National Fluid Power Association (NFPA) that challenges students to create a hydraulically powered vehicle to compete in four different races over two days. The vehicle has to be fully powered by hydraulics, with human power (such as pedaling) being used to move the hydraulic fluid. Electronics and pneumatics can be used to control the flow of the hydraulic oil. Vehicles also must have an energy storage device to take advantage of regenerative braking. The final competition was at the Norgren facility in Colorado from April 12th to April 14th. …

Novel Hitch Cargo Cart, Cesilio Sanchez Ramirez, Lance Haidet, Richard Lontoc, Tyler Selinka

Mechanical Engineering

This document presents the engineering design process used to develop, manufacture, and test a new and improved iteration of a hitch cart prototype. This process was performed by a team of four mechanical engineering seniors as part of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo’s senior design pathway. The goal of this project was to develop a sturdy and reliable iteration of our sponsor’s hitch cart prototype, that integrated the functionality of a vehicle hitch cargo platform and that of a height adjustable cargo cart into a single streamlined and easy to use product. This design could be used by …

Versatile And Robust Non-Iterative Coupling Algorithm For Vehicle-Structure Interaction, Arya Datta

Theses and Dissertations

The dynamic analysis of the vehicle-structure interactions can be extremely computationally expensive. A general non-iterative coupling algorithm based on the substructure approach has been presented. It retains the advantage of the substructure approach that smaller subsystems are solved instead of a large system, which is usually solved when monolithic systems are solved. However, the advantage of using this general coupling approach is that it is non-iterative in nature, instead of the substructure approach that usually uses iterative procedure. The general coupling algorithm developed has been implemented to analyze dynamic interactions between the vehicle and the structure, both in two and …

Achieving Sustainability In Urban Transit And High-Occupancy Vehicle Systems Through Emerging Technologies And Operations, Ruixiao Sun

Theses and Dissertations

It is critical to reduce road transportation emissions, as it is the major source contributing to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and air pollution. However, the increasing travel demand due to the rise of population and economy makes the task challenging. Mathematically, road transportation emissions can be minimized in the manner of reducing total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and lowering vehicle emission rate. Many strategies have been proven viable for achieving transportation sustainability. For example, the total VMT can be reduced by switching low-occupancy transportation modes (i.e., driving alone) to high-occupancy transportation modes (i.e., public transit, ridesharing). The development of alternative-fuel …

B.A.C.O.N. (Battery-Powered Autonomous Cart Conversion) Autonomous Vehicle Design, Robyn C. Ribet, Damond Li, Tanner Hillman, Christopher Or

Mechanical Engineering

The goal of our project is to convert an electric go cart into an autonomous testing platform. We must enable autonomous braking, steering, and acceleration with electro-mechanical systems. We began the project with ideation to create our initial design and have since received ample feedback from faculty, students, and our sponsor. With this feedback we were able to refine our preliminary ideas and produce a detailed design supported with ample analysis, research, and external advice. We have developed our project in four main subsystems: Steering, braking, acceleration, and emergency braking. Following, we procured, manufactured, and assembled all of our designed …

Solar Powered Electric Bicycle, Joseph Kent Debruynkops

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

A solar-powered electric bike that is useful for college students.

Cal Poly Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge 2022, Sangmin Sung, Eddy Rodriguez, Travis Welch, Jeremy Baechler, Kevin Pauls

Mechanical Engineering

In this report, the Featherweight Cycles design team puts forth the scope and overview of their design project, discusses background research and competitor analysis, and presents the project’s final design and manufacturing plans. The overall goal of this project is to fabricate and compete in the Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge, hosted by the National Fluid Power Association. To better define the design process, the team researched previous year’s designs from Cal Poly, as well as winning designs from the last two years to form a baseline of knowledge about competing schools’ designs. After researching multiple design paths, Featherweight Cycles chose …

Rc Baja Independent Suspension And Chassis Design And Development, Joseph Fritz

All Undergraduate Projects

The goal of this project is to develop an RC car to compete in the MET RC Baja competition. A car will be constructed to be as lightweight, durable, and fast as possible while abiding by ROAR (Remotely Operated Auto Racers) regulations. As such, suspension, steering, chassis and drivetrain systems will need to be devised to form a complete vehicle. The chassis must provide mounting points for all other components of the vehicle and provide a rigid platform in order to create a stable vehicle. The suspension must operate smoothly, allowing for at least 1 inch of ground clearance, …

R/C Baja Truck Suspension, Chassis And Steering, Ryan Lafrombois

All Undergraduate Projects

The ASME RC Baja Challenge is an annual competition that the Central Washington University Mechanical Engineering and Technology (MET) department takes part in. Senior level engineers divided the work between the drivetrain and the chassis/suspension while designing and manufacturing to meet a set of requirements. Next, a device was to be developed to be able to withstand the extreme forces to be successful in the competition at the end of the year. The process would require that the students use their acquired knowledge and skills to design, manufacture, and analyze a capable device. Designing involved the completion of 12 analyses …

Vehicle Maintenance Tracking Program, Jared Tomlinson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In order to help consumers and businesses keep track of vehicle maintenance, I will create a program paired with a database that can track vehicle maintenance needs and when they should be performed. The program will be capable of tracking entire fleets of vehicles and based on the vehicle’s mileage, will notify users of what maintenance should be performed. Users will be able to add, remove, and edit vehicles in the system as needed and each vehicle will be paired with a maintenance schedule based on its needs. As maintenance is performed, it can be tracked on the schedule, which …

Torque Vectoring To Maximize Straight-Line Efficiency In An All-Electric Vehicle With Independent Rear Motor Control, William Blake Brown

Theses and Dissertations

BEVs are a critical pathway towards achieving energy independence and meeting greenhouse and pollutant gas reduction goals in the current and future transportation sector [1]. Automotive manufacturers are increasingly investing in the refinement of electric vehicles as they are becoming an increasingly popular response to the global need for reduced transportation emissions. Therefore, there is a desire to extract the most fuel economy from a vehicle as possible. Some areas that manufacturers spend much effort on include minimizing the vehicle’s mass, body drag coefficient, and drag within the powertrain. When these values are defined or unchangeable, interest is driven to …

Nrj Rc Baja Vehicle Project - Transmission, Suspension, And Body Systems, Jeffrey Ryan Harn

All Undergraduate Projects

Students of Central Washington University’s Mechanical Engineering technology program were tasked with designing, manufacturing, and testing a remote-controlled scale vehicle for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Radio-Controlled (RC) Baja Car Contest sanctioned by Remotely Operated Auto Racers (ROAR). A team of three students was assembled and responsibility over the sections of the RC vehicle were divided amongst the three students. This report focuses on the design, manufacture, testing, and evaluation of the suspension and transmission systems of the RC vehicle. A suspension tower component and transmission housing assembly were conceived to satisfy the RC suspension and transmission systems. …

Modeling Operational Performance Of Urban Roads With Heterogeneous Traffic Conditions, Swapneel R. Kodupuganti, Sonu Mathew, Srinivas S. Pulugurtha

Mineta Transportation Institute

The rapid growth in population and related demand for travel during the past few decades has had a catalytic effect on traffic congestion, air quality, and safety in many urban areas. Transportation managers and planners have planned for new facilities to cater to the needs of users of alternative modes of transportation (e.g., public transportation, walking, and bicycling) over the next decade. However, there are no widely accepted methods, nor there is enough evidence to justify whether such plans are instrumental in improving mobility of the transportation system. Therefore, this project researches the operational performance of urban roads with heterogeneous …

Hydraulic Vehicle Challenge, Jacob Steiner, David Kotovets, Evan Blitz, Luke Fetherston, Alex Colucy

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The target goal of this project is for a team of students to design a vehicle which is based on human power as the primary mover of the system and achieves vehicle propulsion through the required use of hydraulics and pneumatics. In summary, the rider will power a pump that will generate pressure in order to move the fluid that drives the motor. This will result in the powered rotation of the wheels. As there are many possible designs, naturally, this means that the final design for the vehicle will have specific limitations such as weight and the required use …

As The Role Of The Driver Changes With Autonomous Vehicle Technology, So, Too, Must The Law Change, Nanci K. Carr

St. Mary's Law Journal

Getting a driver’s license is a highly anticipated rite of passage for most teenagers. Being alone behind the wheel, in control of a 3,000-pound machine, is an honor, a privilege, and a sign of adult responsibility. How will that change when driver’s licenses become licenses “to cause technology to engage” with the increased use of autonomous cars? Will driver’s education courses, with their focus on safety rules and defensive driving techniques, be eliminated if all a vehicle operator needs to do is push a button and the vehicle does the rest? While arguably autonomous cars are safer, they will not …

Surface Autonomous Vehicle For Emergency Rescue, Max Emerick, Ryan Shields, Christopher Feickert, Raymond Impara

Mechanical Engineering

The goal of this document is to clearly define the problem parameters and project objectives and to clearly describe the design process, planned final design, and manufacturing and testing procedures for the senior design project of Team 26: SAVER -- the Surface Autonomous Vehicle for Emergency Rescue. This is both for the purpose of project planning and for clear communication between all parties involved in the project.

The objective of the SAVER project is to develop a proof of concept for an autonomous maritime search and rescue vehicle for aiding in man-overboard missions. To accomplish this goal, a list of …

Evaluating Driving Performance Of A Novel Behavior Planning Model On Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Keyur Shah

Honors Scholar Theses

Many current algorithms and approaches in autonomous driving attempt to solve the "trajectory generation" or "trajectory following” problems: given a target behavior (e.g. stay in the current lane at the speed limit or change lane), what trajectory should the vehicle follow, and what inputs should the driving agent apply to the throttle and brake to achieve this trajectory? In this work, we instead focus on the “behavior planning” problem—specifically, should an autonomous vehicle change lane or keep lane given the current state of the system?

In addition, current theory mainly focuses on single-vehicle systems, where vehicles do not communicate with …

Adjustable Short Throw Shifter (Asts), Joshua Franklin

All Undergraduate Projects

Every manual transmission vehicle has a shift lever for changing gears. The problem is that the shifting linkage is setup up for one kind of driving. Numerous vehicles have multiple settings for the suspension to adapt to varying driving scenarios (i.e. cruising, sport, track). No vehicle currently has an adjustable short throw shifter (ASTS) that can accommodate drag racing, drifting, sports car racing, rallying, off-roading, or casual driving. The design of the ASTS solves this problem by moving the central axis of rotation of the shifter up two inches, permitting the adjustment of the shifting throw between 20 and 40%. …

Subsurface Sensing With Shakers And Inspection Vehicles, Jonathan Robert Burton

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This research furthers the capability and understanding of subsurface sensing techniques. Proper inspection of small culverts can prevent roadway failures, major traffic disturbances and save tens of thousands of dollars on costly repairs. The Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) has adopted a policy requiring all culverts to be inspected every 5 years, resulting in around 9,600 small culverts needing to be inspected annually. Having the proper equipment available to efficiently and effectively inspect small culverts at an affordable price is crucial for road infrastructure maintenance. In this thesis, an inspection vehicle is optimized for efficient and effective small culvert inspection. …

Optimal Direct Yaw Moment Control Of A 4wd Electric Vehicle, Winston James Wight

Master's Theses

This thesis is concerned with electronic stability of an all-wheel drive electric vehicle with independent motors mounted in each wheel. The additional controllability and speed permitted using independent motors can be exploited to improve the handling and stability of electric vehicles. In this thesis, these improvements arise from employing a direct yaw moment control (DYC) system that seeks to adapt the understeer gradient of the vehicle and achieve neutral steer by employing a supervisory controller and simultaneously tracking an ideal yaw rate and ideal sideslip angle. DYC enhances vehicle stability by generating a corrective yaw moment realized by a torque …

Final Design Report For Human Powered Vehicle Drivetrain Project, Derek Fromm, Luke Opitz, Michael Juri, Olivier Côté

Mechanical Engineering

The Cal Poly Human Powered Vehicle Club is building a bike to surpass 61.3 mph in 2019. The club and their mentor, George Leone, have proposed a senior project to design, build, and test the drivetrain for this year’s human powered vehicle. Research into human powered vehicles and their drivetrains has shown that the power that a rider can output and the efficiency at which the rider can pedal depend extensively on the design of the drivetrain. Despite the existence of standard bicycle drivetrain designs, the senior project team has found that the best design to meet the club’s requirements …

Fluid Power Vehicle Competition, Madison Graham, Wayne Ritchie, Emily Dicks, Ariana Cupello

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Our senior design project for the Honors College and the Department of Mechanical Engineering was to design a fluid powered vehicle. Our design was tested in an official capacity against other universities’ vehicles at the Fluid Powered Vehicle Challenge hosted and funded by the National Fluid Power Association (NFPA) and its industry partners. This competition had six different evaluations for our vehicle design; three race events, midway presentation, final presentation, and safety inspection. The three different race events were the sprint race, the efficiency race, and the endurance race. The sprint race was a 475 feet speed test, the efficiency …

Flight Vehicle Design, Andrew Ning

Books

No abstract provided.

Retinex-Based Visibility Enhancement System For Inclement Weather With Tracking And Distance Estimation Capabilities, Marwan S. Alluhaidan

Dissertations

Road conditions affected by weather are well known to have an impact on the number of vehicle accidents and fatalities, due to low- to no-visibility conditions. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are more than 1,259,000 crashes each year. On average, 6,000 people are killed and more than 445,000 people are injured annually due to severe weather conditions. These accidents could be significantly reduced if real-time visibility enhancement systems were made available. However, eliminating the impact of weather conditions on visibility is still lacking and beyond our control. The time has come to develop technology that is capable …

Comparison Of Carbon Steel And Composite Side Wall Of Light Rail Vehicle By Finite Element Analysis, Dilraj Singh

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses

A Railroad car is a vehicle used for carrying passengers and cargo. In the modern era, rail vehicles are designed as lightweight structures with the aim to minimize mass, operational energy demands, and CO2 emissions. Light rail vehicle is used at street level where they have direct contact with normal traffic and have a short distance between stations. In order to reduce dwell time at stops, and so, the vehicle can accelerate and deaccelerate easily, weight should be less and that is why low floor design is adopted these days. The sidewall is a crucial part of the car body …