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 …

Nucor Steel Storage Rack Design, Mac Hanson, Hannah Cataldo, Jason Ziganto, Robert Wozek

Scholar Week 2016 - present

The goal of this design project was to build effective steel storage racks for Nucor Steel Kankakee. The important criteria that the design team needed to meet was that the rack was adjustable, could fit all of the manufactured products that Nucor makes, and could fit various lengths of product. Nucor needs a new rack system because their current process makes the shipping process very inefficient.

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 …

Static Analysis Of Circular Plates Under Mechanical Loads, Harpreet Lalia

Publications and Research

In this research statics analysis of circular plates is performed using SolidWorks.

Circular plates with different material properties, thickness to radius ratios, and boundary conditions under mechanical loads are modeled and analyzed in SolidWorks.

The results are obtained for deflections of circular plates under uniform and point loads.

A three-dimensional (3D) model of circular plates is first created in SolidWorks. Then the material properties, mechanical loads and boundary conditions are defined for the plate.

It is found deflection of plates is depended on magnitude of mechanical loads, geometrical parameters, boundary conditions and material properties. Responses of SolidWorks for deflections of …

Design And Implementation Of An Interactive Animatronic System For Guest Response Analysis, Brian Burns

Phi Kappa Phi Research Symposium (2012-2016)

In theme park based entertainment applications, there is a need for interactive, autonomous animatronic systems to create engaging and compelling experiences for the guests. The animatronic figures must identify the guests and recognize their status in dynamic interactions for enhanced acceptance and effectiveness as socially interactive agents, in the general framework of human-robot interactions. The design and implementation of an interactive, autonomous animatronic system in form of a tabletop dragon, Kronos, and the comparisons of guest responses in its passive and interactive modes are presented in this work. The dragon capabilities include a four degrees-of-freedom head, moving wings, tail, jaw, …