Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Young's Modulus Of [111] Germanium Nanowires, M. Maksud, J. Yoo, C. T. Harris, N. K. R. Palapati, A. Subramanian

Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Publications

This paper reports a diameter-independent Young’s modulus of 91.9 ± 8.2 GPa for [111] Germaniumnanowires (Ge NWs). When the surface oxide layer is accounted for using a core-shell NW approximation, the YM of the Ge core approaches a near theoretical value of 147.6 ± 23.4 GPa. The ultimate strength of a NW device was measured at 10.9 GPa, which represents a very high experimental-to-theoretical strength ratio of ∼75%. With increasing interest in this material system as a high-capacity lithium-ion battery anode, the presented data provide inputs that are essential in predicting its lithiation-induced stress fields and fracture behavior.

Molten Metal Loop Driven By Electromagnetic Pump, Dominic Espiritu, Dor Granek, Jerald Moore, Scott Torres

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The first challenge of this proposed study was the gauges for the loop, which were not functioning properly and giving off inaccurate data due to a loop flow issue. Therefore a new loop design, including gauges, was created to gather accurate data for the electromagnetic pump. The electromagnetic pump used in this experiment differs from the standard electromagnetic motors by using rare earth magnets set into opposing steel plates that rotate simultaneously. Accurate data from the velocity and pressure gauges is necessary so the correlation between the EM pump’s speed and the flow velocity could be calculated. This technology could …

Main Body Aerodynamics, Michael Al-Badini, Christopher Buettner, Wesley Russell, Steven Summerville, Marcus Wardlow

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Our senior design project entails designing, analyzing the front upper aerodynamic nose for the Formula SAE at VCU’s race team. Currently there are no provisions on the chassis to provide relief for parasitic loss of speed & efficiency due to drag. Since Formula SAE is focused on building a engineered, safe, and efficient vehicle our aerodynamic design will help with handling, downforce, and fuel economy all while reducing drag. Our Aerodynamic design will play a key role not only in how the Formula car is perceived aesthetically, but our calculations will be a large determining factor in the cars overall …

Fsae Rear Diffuser Team, Zarwan Waqar, Sohail Hossini, Saman Usodan

Capstone Design Expo Posters

To generate additional force that is applied to the rear of the FSAE race car The importance of the rear diffuser is to add a rear force to the vehicle. The rear force is generated from the airflow coming from underneath the vehicle. The way the airflow creates a force is through generating a pressure differential in which the air exiting the rear of the race car is now causing a downward force from the diffuser. The use of a diffuser is known to be of use at high speeds and if designed correctly creating the aerodynamics needed to keep …

Fsae Pedal Box: Controlling Stop And Go, Christopher Hathcock, Tyler Munden

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The VCU FSAE team has a need for foot controls for the brakes and throttle on their newest race car. The assembly must meet the rules set forth by the FSAE organization to compete, and must be as light and low as possible to conserve the acceleration and handling characteristics of the car. Furthermore, the project must be completed on a budget of $500 allotted to Senior Design teams. The FSAE team has been working on the current car since 2005 and has yet to produce a drivable race car. The Senior Design teams this year cover the major systems …

Fsae Rear Differential Carrier, Nicholas Rivero, Peter Quach, Zack Jillani

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The Formula SAE design project enables engineering students to develop, analyze, build, and benchmark a Formula-style racecar. A differential was designed for VCU’s car to ensure that power is evenly distributed to the drive wheels under all possible handling conditions. A mounting system is required to secure the differential to the frame. Failure of this carrier could be catastrophic, therefore precise consideration of all possible forces and loading situations is required for design. A team was developed to examine how dynamic forces and fatigue contribute to component failure. Based on the results of this analysis a differential carrier can be …

Vertical Tank Inspection Device, Tyriek Bayne, Sarah Morgan, Donald Reid, Charles Stacy

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) has requested a design for a telescoping arm able to carry out vertical tank inspection aboard ships. This device will play a key role in saving time and money, as well as potentially decreasing health and safety risks. The current system is both time consuming and limited to incremental positioning. A new system will permit inspectors to spend less time and effort at this portion of the tank and possibly complete their task much sooner. Based on design criteria given by Newport News Shipbuilding, a telescoping mechanism will be designed to lower a camera 18 ft. …

Robotic Inspection Of Geometrically Complex Tank Systems, James Dinsmore, Jay Kim, Randolph Snook, Thanh Tran, Trenton Wilhelmi

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The primary focus of this project is to create an autonomous rail based robot to inspect and traverse tanks with the idea of future improvements that would carry out all duties of the refurbishing process. By using a more cost-efficient method of semi-autonomous robotic inspection and refurbishment, Newport News Shipbuilding will be able to reduce the risk of harm and level of manual labor required for the refurbishment process. Additionally, the amount of personal protective equipment that needs disposal should be decreased, thus having a positive impact on the environment.

An initial prototype was developed as a 2013-2014 senior project. …

Formula-Sae: Shift System And Controls, Ashton Bressler, Cody Bryant, Christian Fergusson, Jason Shephard

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Problem statement: Formula SAE has been at VCU for the last three years and the team is now getting to the point of having the formula car ready to run and drive. One of the things that needs to be finished for this to happen is the installation of a shifting system.

Rationale: Once completed, the FSAE team will be one step closer to having a competition ready formula car. While a major part of the team is the members’ love of all things fast, we also believe that the car will provide exposure to the VCU School of Engineering …

Tapered Roller Bearing Test Rig: Axially Loaded Application To Accelerate Bearing Failure, Andrew Compton, Donnie Miller, Thomas Miller, Milton Chandler

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Problem Statement: Fatigue life testing of large tapered roller bearing components for rail applications is often very costly and time consuming. The purpose of this project is to assist Amsted Rail Company, Inc. develop a large railroad tapered roller bearing test rig that does not require scaled down prototypes bearings. As these are tapered rollers, loads can be applied from either the lateral or radial direction. L10 bearing life test predictions for the test rig bearings should be carried out using the American Bearing Manufacturers Association standards. The test rig can be designed to test as many as 4 bearings …

Tapered Roller Bearing Accelerated Fatigue Life Test Rig Design, Hilton Bennett, Elizabeth Englert, Beck Grimm, Nathan Morris, Matthew Ofsonka, David Trinh

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Fatigue life testing of large tapered roller bearings for railroad applications is both expensive and time consuming. Accepted methods for testing bearings include full–size and scaled down testing. Currently, bearing test methods at Brenco take up to six months to complete, and scaled down testing requires additional resources for manufacturing prototypes and testing capabilities that are not economically ideal. The purpose of this project is the development of a tapered roller bearing test rig to test bearings to their fatigue life as quickly as possible. The rig design can accommodate bearing sizes in the range of one half (½) to …

Nuclear Reactor Simulator, Adriana Camargo, Jonathan Dip, Gordan Ek, Vance Petrella, Soeuth Soeun, Nicole Waugh

Capstone Design Expo Posters

VCU’s nuclear reactor simulator provides a real time simulation of the operation of a nuclear power plant. Student developed LabVIEW programs display the controls and instrumentation of a reactor control room on twenty eight computer monitors, thirteen of which are touchscreens. Changing reactor conditions are calculated with the best-estimate nuclear system analysis code RETRAN-3D. Simulator design provides for the interaction between student reactor operators and an instructor through instructor driven reactor transients. The simulator is used as a teaching tool for VCU engineering students and for public education and community outreach. The VCU nuclear simulator is an ongoing senior design …

Lower Body Exoskeleton Powered By Epidermal Electronics Systems, Francis Azari, Forrest Baber, Saswat Mishra, Karan Patel, Juan Soto

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The purpose of our design revolves around the concept of enhancing the human body through the use of a lower body exoskeleton. The most applicable demographics for our design consists of paraplegics and non-paraplegics. The various uses we hope to include would allow the user to: walk again, lift heavier loads with the ability to move forward, back and be seated. Although lower body exoskeletons already exist on the market, they still have shortcomings that prevent widespread use among the general public. Our hope is to improve upon the design of existing exoskeletons with the integration of epidermal electronic systems …

The Superhydrophobic Boat, Cole Anton, Edin Avdic, Aneesh Sandhir, Tyler Zheng

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The purpose of this project is to successfully design and construct a boat hull while minimizing the amount of solid material in contact with the water. If successful, this experiment could serve as a first step in designing more efficient vessels through the reduction of the water drag force on the object. The approach to this project involved determining the optimal wire mesh and coating combination for the boat hull using both computational methods and experiment.

The Perfect Coffee Cup, Suzanne Bowers, Jessica Ingram, David Murphy, Gillian Stavlas

Capstone Design Expo Posters

To design a coffee cup that will maintain the coffee at the optimal drinking temperature for several hours using Phase Change Material, PCM. The importance of this project is designing a coffee cup that will retain its temperature for a prolonged period of time giving the consumer plenty of time to finish their coffee at the desired consumption temperature. We designed a double walled cup that would contain the PCM. Heat transfer calculations were done for different materials such as acrylic, glass, and stainless steel with various thicknesses for each material. These calculations were used to decide on the ideal …

Low-Cost Desalination Unit: Direct Contact Membrane Distillation, Meghan Herbert-Walters, Aubrey Martin, Lauren Scolese, Tina Trinh

Capstone Design Expo Posters

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 783 million people do not have access to a reliable clean water source. With this many people in the world without access to clean water, a solution to this problem is highly essential. The objective of this project is to create a low-cost compact desalination unit that can be used to turn contaminated water into pure drinking. For our design, a direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) approach was used. The DCMD system allows only for the evaporated feed water to pass through the membrane and therefore causes an increase …

Radio Controlled Aircraft, Michael Johnson, Dakota Macgill, Robert Peake, Ryan Wydler

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Building an R/C aircraft isn’t exactly a project intent on breaking ground in the field of aerospace engineering, rather it is an opportunity to apply fluid dynamics in a practical manner to gain experience in aeronautical engineering. An aerospace engineer is one who designs and builds aircraft and spacecraft and are often tasked with deeming an aircraft flight worthy or not. We will attempt to predict the feasibility of our custom plane designs using aircraft engineering techniques found through research and through texts provided by our advisor, Dr. Jayasimha. The goal of this design is to design and fabricate a …

Automotive Object Detection Simulator, Ishoc Salaam, Stephen Holder, Taylor Fines

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Can you imagine starting your car, pushing a button, and it drives you to work? This technology is not as far in the future as you may think. Cars such as Mercedes Benz’s S-class and Audi’s A7 prototype have a traffic jam assist feature which at speeds under 40 mph, a button can be pressed and the car will drive itself on the highway. The system uses an array of cameras, sensors, and radars to follow the car in front at a safe distance while staying within its lane. If another car cuts in front of it with the feature …

Industrial Brush Coiler Attachment, Amber Clark, Tim Paredes, Andy Richardson, Kayleigh Rogers, Branden Yam

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Problem Statement: Company initially desired a new machine that would be able to produce external coiled brushes that would help in increasing revenue and project opportunities. The design has shifted to making an attachment to the existing equipment that would help in this effort instead of developing a completely new unit.

Rationale: Sealeze sees this as an opportunity of increasing revenue and also taking on the effort of making externally coiled brushes more efficiently. If successful, more clients can be taken in and it would make Sealeze a more versatile company.

Approach: The main approach revolved around weekly meetings with …