Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Cross Sections Used To Elucidate Differences In Wavelet Transforms Of Ground Force Reactions, Wesley John Orme

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

A study done for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that over 50% of sports related injuries are to the lower extremities [1] with additional studies indicating that females, adolescent through collegiate, have a higher rate of lower extremity sports related injuries than males [2-4]. Conditions surrounding non-contact injuries can be analyzed using ground reaction force (GRF) data from force plates during unanticipated single leg drops, however, the expected gender differences in GRF may not be apparent when viewing data independently in the time or frequency domains.

Graphing the results of a wavelet transform, currently used by scientific, medical, …

Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling Of Atmospheric Flow Applied To Wind Energy Research, Alan Russell

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

High resolution atmospheric flow modeling using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has many applications in the wind energy industry. A well designed model can accurately calculate wind speed, direction, and turbulence at any point in a wind farm using data from a fixed location source. The model can extend point source data over an area of several square kilometers, or map terrain influenced microclimates using remote wind data. A local flow model is critical for wind resource site assessment, and for optimizing wind farm turbine layout for maximum power production. A CFD simulation of an operating wind farm, coupled with a …

Biomechanical Evaluation Of Glenohumeral Joint Stabilizing Muscles During Provocative Tests Designed To Diagnose Superior Labrum Anterior-Posterior Lesions, Vanessa J. C. Wood

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Despite considerable advances in the understanding of glenohumeral (GH) biomechanics and glenoid labral pathologies, arthroscopy remains the only definitive means of Superior Labrum Anterior-Posterior (SLAP) lesion diagnosis. Unfortunately, natural GH anatomic variants limit the reliability of radiography. Accurate clinical diagnostic techniques would be advantageous due to the invasiveness, patient risk, and financial cost associated with arthroscopy. Twenty provocative tests designed to elicit labral symptoms as a diagnostic sign have shown promising accuracy by their respective original authors, but later studies generally fail to reproduce those findings. The purpose of this study was to compare the behavior of GH joint stabilizing …

Influence Of Towing Force Magnitude On The Kinematics Of Supramaximal Sprinting, David A. Clark, Seth Kuhlman, Michelle B. Sabick, Ronald P. Pfeiffer, Nicole A. Knigge

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of towing force magnitude on the kinematics of supramaximal sprinting. Ten high school and collegiate aged track and field athletes ran 60m maximal sprints under 5 different conditions: non-towed (NT), Tow A (2.0% body weight), Tow B (2.8%BW), Tow C (3.8%BW), and Tow D (4.7%BW). Three-dimensional kinematics of a 4-segment model of the right side of the body were collected starting at the 35m point of the trial. Significant differences were observed in stride length (SL) and horizontal velocity of the center of mass (VH) during Tow C and Tow …

The Relationships Between Muscle, External, Internal And Joint Mechanical Work During Normal Walking, Kotaro Sasaki, Richard R. Neptune, Steven A. Kautz

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Muscle mechanical work is an important biomechanical quantity in human movement analyses and has been estimated using different quantities including external, internal and joint work. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationships between these traditionally used estimates of mechanical work in human walking and to assess whether they can be used as accurate estimates of musculotendon and/or muscle fiber work. A muscle-actuated forward dynamics walking simulation was generated to quantify each of the mechanical work measures. Total joint work (i.e. the time integral of absolute joint power over a full gait cycle) was found to underestimate total …

Rapid-Response Urban Cfd Simulations Using A Gpu Computing Paradigm On Desktop Supercomputers, Inanc Senocak, Julien C. Thibault, Matthew Caylor

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the event of chemical or biological (CB) agent attacks or accidents, first-responders need hazard prediction data to launch effective emergency response action. Accurate and timely knowledge of the wind fields in urban areas is critically important to identify and project the extent of CB agent dispersion to determine the hazard-zone. In their 2008 report (GAO-08-180), U.S. Government Accountability Office has reported that first responders are limited in their ability to detect and model hazardous releases in urban environments. The current set of modeling tools for contaminant dispersion in urban environments rely on empirical assumptions with diagnostic equations (Wang et …

Carbon-Free Compressed Air Energy Storage, Dustin Andrew Shively

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The inherent intermittency of the two fastest growing renewable energy sources, wind and solar, presents a significant barrier to widespread penetration and replacement of fossil-fuel sourced baseload generation. These intermittencies range from short term ramp events experienced by wind farms to the diurnal fluctuation of solar installations. Traditionally, grid operators have had very little control over demand and full control over supply. With the increase in wind and solar based generation onto an electric grid comes a decrease in control of supply. Grid operators are required to have a certain amount of spinning reserve ready to respond when wind or …

Cuda Implementation Of A Navier-Stokes Solver On Multi-Gpu Desktop Platforms For Incompressible Flows, Julien C. Thibault, Inanc Senocak

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Graphics processor units (GPU) that are traditionally designed for graphics rendering have emerged as massively-parallel "co-processors" to the central processing unit (CPU). Small-footprint desktop supercomputers with hundreds of cores that can deliver teraflops peak performance at the price of conventional workstations have been realized. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation capability with rapid computational turnaround time has the potential to transform engineering analysis and design optimization procedures. We describe the implementation of a Navier-Stokes solver for incompressible fluid flow using desktop platforms equipped with multi-GPUs. Specifically, NVIDIA’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) programming model is used to implement the discretized …