Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

The Aerocap Aerodynamic Attachment For Pickup Trucks, Andrew J. Tucker, David Silk

ATU Research Symposium

As the pickup truck continuously becomes more popular in both commercial and family applications, the fuel efficiency of modern pickup design should be brought into question. According to CBS News, pickup trucks accounted for around 20% of all new vehicles sold in America in 2022, with the three most popular vehicles sold during the year all being pickups. However, these vehicles consistently have higher drag coefficients than other types of vehicles, namely sedans or crossovers. This leads to decreased fuel economy and more overall greenhouse gas emissions. Even in the case of an electric pickup truck, the high drag coefficient …

Introducing Modeling To First-Year Engineering Students For Effective Implementation In The Engineering Design Process, Carolina Barriento, Juan F. Granizo

PanaSoMM

Introducing Modeling to First-Year Engineering Students for Effective Implementation in the Engineering Design Process

Carolina Barriento and Juan Francisco Granizo

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Abstract

Modeling and Simulation are fundamental skills for all engineering students [1]. However, students are usually introduced to these concepts during their junior or even as late as their senior year. Our research aims at familiarizing students with Modeling and Simulation tools in their first year of engineering studies. We consider the fact that proper learning involves using long-term memory (in contrast with working memory) and this is accomplished by the gradual introduction and practice of the …

Basic Utilities Vehicle (Buv) Milk Transportation, Brian D. Reynolds, Sean Patrick Bayless Galligar, Emmitt Hanner, Joshua T. Pitts

Scholar Week 2016 - present

In developing countries, a need exists for the transportation of raw foods to communities without spoilage. Traditional methods of transporting goods don’t meet the needs of the consumer, and often times food is wasted due to the harsh climate and time constraints. Food often becomes salvage under the heat, causing a hurt to the profitability of vendors and family needs for fresh produce. In particular milk transportation has become difficult, due to the lack of cold storage in standard transit. As a response to the need for affordable raw food transport, our sponsor Basic Utilities Vehicle (BUV) has tasked us …

Olivet Nazarene University Telescope Vibration, Jake Butterfield, Kamil Michorczyk, Nathan Eckerle

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Our project entails the use of vibration analysis to come up with a solution to the vibrational issues the ONU Telescope on top of Reed Hall of Science is currently experiencing. In its current state, the telescope produces images that are shaky and unclear; thus, rendering it useless for its intended research purposes. This shaky image is a result of excessive vibrations on and around the telescope. Within this project we diagnosed the source of the vibrations, brainstormed different design possibilities, chose the best one that is most feasible and meets the client’s needs, and proposed a detailed final design …

Reverse Osmosis; Addressing Freshwater Shortage With Sustainable Desalination, Jessica Savage

Sustainability Conference

Water security is an imperative part of high-functioning societies. Currently, large populations of the globe live in water-impoverished or water-stressed areas. With climate change and growing global populations, projections show more people being impacted by issues of water shortage.

One solution to water security is the implementation of desalination, specifically with reverse osmosis systems. This presentation walks through the history, capabilities, future work, and explanations on how reverse osmosis systems work. With continued research on improving desalination, communities in both developed and developing nations around the world can work towards total water security.

Adaptable Clean Energy Laboratory, Joao Marcelo Rocha Belmonte, Marc D. Compere

Sustainability Conference

The Adaptable Clean Energy (ACE) Lab is a real-world, long term, test platform that will guide the courses of the Energy Systems track. The lab will provide realistic electrical and HVAC loads that mimic a solar powered office. The lab is a 20’ high cube shipping container modified with a door, windows, lights computers, air conditioner and appliances. The lab is Net-Zero and powered entirely from the sun. Two insulation test sections expose the exterior walls for research access to real external heat loads in a real building

The Comparison Of Verbalized Feedback In Human To Computer Interfacing Versus Human To Human Interaction, Kea Francis

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

The project evaluates response to social robots for purposeful tasks. The study uses a social robot, Rapiro, along with a smartphone that serves as a visual interface for the robot system. My role was to design a program on a Raspberry Pi that allows simultaneous control of Rapiro’s actions and a response from a phone application. The phone app is downloaded to an Android phone and designed using MIT App Inventor software. This allows pre-programmed and real-time control of the robot. The user inputs what they want the robot to say through the terminal of the Raspberry Pi. Through serial …

Predict The Failure Of Hydraulic Pumps By Different Machine Learning Algorithms, Yifei Zhou, Monika Ivantysynova, Nathan Keller

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Pump failure is a general concerned problem in the hydraulic field. Once happening, it will cause a huge property loss and even the life loss. The common methods to prevent the occurrence of pump failure is by preventative maintenance and breakdown maintenance, however, both of them have significant drawbacks. This research focuses on the axial piston pump and provides a new solution by the prognostic of pump failure using the classification of machine learning. Different kinds of sensors (temperature, acceleration and etc.) were installed into a good condition pump and three different kinds of damaged pumps to measure 10 of …

Analytical Solution Of Microbes Interacting With Surfaces, Junyuan Li, Arezoo M. Ardekani

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Nowadays, there is a rising interest in studying the behavior of microbes and their interactions with flow and surfaces. In order to explore the velocity field, pressure and forces around the microbes, the solution of Stokes equations, which is called a Stokeslet, is used. This solution represents a singular velocity field due to a concentrated external force acting on fluid at a single point. This singularity could cause the expression of velocity not integrable. We use the Regularized Stokeslet Method and Method of Images to deal with this problem. The expression of force is replaced by a radially symmetric function, …

Development Of Portable Hyperspectral Imaging Device, Chenxi Li, Youngkee Jung, Iyll-Joon Doh, Euiwon Bae

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Most of the conventional hyperspectral imaging devices require sophisticated optical components, occupy a large footprint, and requires an initial capital investment for laboratories which mostly suits for laboratories benchtop system. The requirement of shipping the sample and waiting an extended period of time to get the results are the main downsides of this traditional approach. Capitalize in many specific field applications and diagnosis, portable devices provide both convenience and on-site results which are desirable for government agencies and food safety inspectors. This project was aimed to develop a low-cost, portable hyperspectral device for food safety applications. A smartphone was used …

The Influence Of Macroscale Stress Concentrations On The Near-Resonant Thermomechanics Of Mock Energetic Materials, Lauren A. Cooper, Allison R. Range, Jeffrey F. Rhoads

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The characterization of particulate composite energetic materials, both with and without stress concentration, is currently of great interest to the defense community. This work seeks to further characterize the self-heating effect of composite energetic plates, particularly around regions of high stress, when subjected to harmonic excitation near resonance. Mock energetic plates with macroscale stress concentrations are prepared in various compositions based on the PBXN-109 formulation, and are tested near the first resonant frequency using an electrodynamic shaker. The resulting mechanical and thermal responses are recorded using a laser Doppler vibrometer and an infrared camera, respectively. Upon comparison between the regions …

Simulating Dynamic Failure Of Polymer-Bonded Explosives Under Periodic Excitation, Rachel Kohler, Camilo Duarte Cordon, Marisol Koslowski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Accidental mishandling of explosive materials leads to thousands of injuries in the US every year. Understanding the mechanisms behind the detonation process is crucial to prevent such accidents. In polymer-bonded explosives (PBX), high-frequency mechanical excitation generates thermal energy and can lead to an increase in temperature and vapor pressure, and potentially the initiation of the detonation process. However, the mechanisms behind this energy release, such as the effects of dynamic fracture and friction, are not well understood. Experimental data is difficult to collect due to the different time scales of reactions and vibrations, so research is aided by running simulations …

Image-Based Compression Method Of Three-Dimensional Range Data With Texture, Xia Chen, Tyler Bell, Song Zhang

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Recently, high speed and high accuracy three-dimensional (3D) scanning techniques and commercially available 3D scanning devices have made real-time 3D shape measurement and reconstruction possible. The conventional mesh representation of 3D geometry, however, results in large file sizes, causing difficulties for its storage and transmission. Methods for compressing scanned 3D data therefore become desired. This paper proposes a novel compression method which stores 3D range data within the color channels of a regular 2D output image. Our method encodes the 3D range data’s respective normalized phase map, generated by a virtual stereovision system, into two of the output image’s color …

Skin Strain Measurement To Predict Knee Joint Angles Through Nanocomposite Stain Gauges, Adin Martineau, James Tracy, Gavin Collins, Parker Rosquist, Dustin A. Bruening, Matt K. Seeley, David T. Fullwood, Anton E. Bowden

Biomedical Engineering Western Regional Conference

Explores the possibility of using high deflection nanocomposite strain gauges as knee joint angle sensor.

Redesign Of Computer Keyboards For Hospital And Consumer Use, Kent Williams, Brian Jensen, Anton Bowden

Biomedical Engineering Western Regional Conference

Application of carbon nanotube coatings to computer keyboards in order to reduce the spread of bacteria in hospitals and homes.

Keywords: carbon nanotube, bacteria, antimicrobial, keyboard, design, MRSA, biofilm

A Nanocomposite Sensor Neck Sleeve For Tracking In Vivo Spine Kinematics In The Alpaca, Colton Porter Graham, Anton Bowden

Biomedical Engineering Western Regional Conference

Chronic low back pain in the US is often attributed to intervertebral disc degeneration. Camelids, particularly alpacas, pose a potential model for spinal treatment due to similarity of the spinal structure and vertical loading. Alpacas also exhibit a high rate of natural disc degeneration. To gain more understanding about how disc degeneration is caused in alpacas it is necessary to understand the loading and motion of the alpaca cervical spine. The goal of the present work was to incorporate nanocomposite sensors into a custom-designed neck sleeve to track the daily in-vivo neck motion of an alpaca in its natural environment.

Study On Mechanical Properties Of Silicone Rubber Materials Used As Gaskets In Pem Fuel Cell Environment, Guo Li

The 8th International Conference on Physical and Numerical Simulation of Materials Processing

No abstract provided.

Mhd Modeling Of A Copper Slag Cleaning Process, Hongkun Yang, Jörg Wolters, Helmut Soltner, Phillip Pischke, Sven Eckert, Jochen Fröhlich

The 8th International Conference on Physical and Numerical Simulation of Materials Processing

No abstract provided.

Fiber-Optic Imaging In An Internal Combustion Engine Test Rig, Conor Martin, Michael Smyser, Aswin Ramesh, Greg Shaver, Terrence Meyer

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The formation of particulate matter (PM/soot), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and other byproducts of the combustion process in diesel engines is controlled by spatiotemporally varying quantities within the engine cylinders which traditional sensors cannot resolve. This study explores the use of an advanced sensing technique using an optical probe which can be used to produce highly spatiotemporally resolved in cylinder images of the flame formation during the combustion stroke. Using a fiber optic cable and custom lensing system adapted to fit a pre-existing pressure transducer port, light from within the cylinder can be transmitted through the imaging probe to a high …

High Strain Rate Experiments Of Energetic Material Binder, Roberto Rangel Mendoza, Michael Harr, Weinong Chen

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Energetic materials, in particular HMX, is widely used in many applications as polymer bonded explosives (PBX) and rocket propellant. However, when damaged, HMX is known to be an unstable substance which renders it a hazardous material and in some cases unreliable. Finding critical mechanical conditions at high rates that render various forms of energetic materials as unreliable would be vital to understand the effects that vibrations and compression forces have on energetic materials. A better understanding would enable the ability to develop improvements in the manufacturing of PBX and rocker propellant. The method utilized to evaluate the mechanical properties of …

Development Of A Diode-Laser Absorption-Spectroscopy Sensor For Real-Time Control Of Combustion Systems, Rahul P. Balla, Christopher S. Goldenstein

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Tunable diode-laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) sensors are widely used for measuring gas properties. These sensors offer several advantages including: small footprint, affordability, applicability to harsh environments, rapid time response, and calibration-free operation. As a result, diode-laser sensors can be integrated into control-systems and have previously been used to control gas-turbine combustors. In this study, high-frequency sine waves were generated continuously by a LabVIEW program to simultaneously scan and modulate the wavelength and intensity of a diode laser. The modulated laser light was transmitted 20 cm through the air and measured on a photodetector. Custom-built lock-in software was used to acquire …

4-H Nfpa Fluid Power Challenge, Erika D. Bonnett

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

The 4-H NFPA Fluid Power Challenge partnered Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Indiana 4-H with the National Fluid Power Association and Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power to provide teams of Indiana youth in 6-8th grades with opportunity to learn about hydraulics, engineering design, and other STEM skills. This created an opportunity to give youth a learning experience with STEM through hands-on, experiential learning activities. Youth experienced a one day workshop in which they worked as teams to learn concepts of fluid power through hands-on learning. Teams then went back to their communities and created and designed a fluid power …

The Future Of Rural Communities, Alondra B. Perez, Yanliang Zhang (Mentor)

Idaho Conference on Undergraduate Research

There is a problem in how modern energy is being distributed throughout the world; less than a quarter of the population have access to energy. Limited energy access is seen in rural areas because of the costs that comes from transporting material and making modern energy resources (solar panels, wind turbines, etc..). Through research on thermoelectric devices, there have been many theories tested in order to improve energy efficiency focusing on easy maneuverable resources. At Boise State’s Advanced Energy Lab, thermoelectric generators are being created and modified which can be used to help communities from rural areas power utilities needed …

Test Rig Design For Compact Variable Displacement Vane Pump, Pratik Chawla, Ryan Jenkins, Monika Ivantysynova

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Variable displacement vane pumps (VDVP) are one type of positive displacement pumps used in automatic transmission vehicles for lubricating the gears, cooling the transmission and actuating the clutches. Though fixed displacement pumps are widely used, they output a constant effective flow at a given speed. Depending on pump sizing considerations, the pump can be oversized at high speeds because flow demand of the transmission is independent of engine speed. The excess flow returns to the tank through an orifice that causes the oil to heat up, increasing the energy required for cooling and reducing the efficiency of the transmission. A …

Optimization In The Simulation Of Jammed Polyhedral Particles, Joseph W. Mynhier, Ishan Srivastava, Timothy S. Fisher

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Energy loss due to poor transport properties in electrically and thermally conducting materials, such as battery electrodes and thermoelectric composites, contributes to the energy inefficiency of electronic devices. For conductive materials composed of granular materials, particle-particle contact topology strongly governs the efficiency of energy transfer. Although there is a large body of existing work on the arrangements made by granular materials comprised of spherical particles, less is known about the mechanically stable arrangements of granular materials made of convex polyhedra. This project seeks to create a computer simulation of the solidification of convex polyhedra from a diffuse state into a …

Towards An Optical In-Line Characterization Of Nano Petals, Yiming Ding, Huisung Kim, Euiwon Bae

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Carbon Nano Petals (i.e. CNPs) are cantilevered multilayer grapheme sheets that are seeded from core graphite fibers. The resulting structure offers a possibility of minimizing interfacial losses in transport application, improved interactions with surrounding matrix materials in composites, and a route toward substrate independence for device applications. The mass production of CNPs on the substrate required a method that can provide synchronous feedback on the sample status without pulling them out of the production line. Different optical properties can be observed when surfaces with different roughness are illuminated with a highly coherent light such as a laser beam. Similarly, CNPs …

Influences Of Wind On Automotive Interior Sound Quality, Sara Huelsman, Patricia Davies, Daniel Carr

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The effects of noise on human health (both mental and physical) are well known, and motivation to decrease noise in daily life is prevalent. Wind noise within automotive interior cabins could be detrimental to human health and comfort because of the negative impact on speech intelligibility and fatigue overall. There is little information on human perception of wind noise in automobile interiors though Loudness and Articulation Index have been examined as predictors of human response. They have been found to predict well in some circumstances, but not in others. In this research, a variety of sound quality metrics are being …

Characterization Of Hydrogel Curing Methods For Manufacturability, Hannah E. Brown, Rebecca K. Kramer, Edward L. White

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In the field of soft robotics, hydrogels possess material properties that allow them to function as both soft strain sensors and dielectric elastomer actuators. However, there is still much that needs to be understood about the curing process of hydrogels and the resulting material characteristics before manufacturing these devices can be accomplished. In this study, we investigated the effect of curing time and sample volume on the as-cured material properties of acrylamide-based hydrogels hydrated with lithium and magnesium chloride salt solutions. Samples were cured at room temperature, 60° C and 100° C, and the resulting changes in mechanical stiffness and …

Development Of Combined Dual-Pump Vibrational And Pure-Rotational Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (Dpvcars And Prcars) System, Shenli Yuan, Aman Satija, Robert Lucht

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) [1,2] is a spatially-resolved, time-resolved spectroscopic technique for quantitative measurements in reacting flows [3 – 6]. This work demonstrates a combination of N₂/O₂/CO₂ dual-pump vibrational coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (DPVCARS) system and two-beam pure-rotational coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (PRCARS) system. It is based on the previous development of combined VCARS and PRCARS system which was used to obtain temperature measurements in non-premixed H₂-air flames. The new combined system will be used to measure the temperature profiles and major species concentrations such as N₂/O₂/CO_{2 …}

Porphyrin Interaction With Dna-Based Carbon Nanotubes And Regeneration For Light Harvesting, Sawyer E. Morgan, Hanyu Zhang, Jong Hyun Choi

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Limitations to current solar cells include the high cost of pure silicon and poor current transfer within cells. An emerging alternative is single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), which when combined with DNA and porphyrin chromophores can generate a current when absorbing light. We sought to find a chromophore and conditions that would promote bonding to the SWCNTs and improve light harvesting, while being able to regenerate on the film after being damaged. This was experimentally tested by first making SWCNT films on conducting glass slides. These were then functionalized in solutions of chromophore and spectra were measured to determine the bonding …