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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering

Me-Em Enewsbrief, July-December 2017, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University Dec 2017

Me-Em Enewsbrief, July-December 2017, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.


Distributed Manufacturing Of Flexible Products: Technical Feasibility And Economic Viability, Aubrey Woern, Joshua M. Pearce Oct 2017

Distributed Manufacturing Of Flexible Products: Technical Feasibility And Economic Viability, Aubrey Woern, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

Distributed manufacturing even at the household level is now well established with the combined use of open source designs and self-replicating rapid prototyper (RepRap) 3-D printers. Previous work has shown substantial economic consumer benefits for producing their own polymer products. Now flexible filaments are available at roughly 3-times the cost of more conventional 3-D printing materials. To provide some insight into the potential for flexible filament to be both technically feasible and economically viable for distributed digital manufacturing at the consumer level this study investigates 20 common flexible household products. The 3-D printed products were quantified by print time, electrical …


Rarefication Effects On Jet Impingement Loads, Shiying Cai, Chunpei Cai, Kai Zhang, Jun Li Sep 2017

Rarefication Effects On Jet Impingement Loads, Shiying Cai, Chunpei Cai, Kai Zhang, Jun Li

Michigan Tech Publications

Rarefication effects on jet impingement loads are studied by comparing recent new formulas at the collisionless flow limit and numerical simulations. The jet exit size is finite, and can be either planar or round. In the simulations, the jets have different degrees of rarefication, with a Knudsen (Kn) number ranging from 0 to infinity; i.e., the jet flows can be continuum, collisional, or collisionless. The comparison results indicate that (1) the new surface load formulas are accurate at the collisionless flow limit; (2) in general, the formulas offer upper limits for the peak loads; (3) however, it is improper to …


Open Source 3-D Printed Nutating Mixer, Dhwani K. Trivedi, Joshua M. Pearce Sep 2017

Open Source 3-D Printed Nutating Mixer, Dhwani K. Trivedi, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

As the open source development of additive manufacturing has led to low-cost desktop three-dimensional (3-D) printing, a number of scientists throughout the world have begun to share digital designs of free and open source scientific hardware. Open source scientific hardware enables custom experimentation, laboratory control, rapid upgrading, transparent maintenance, and lower costs in general. To aid in this trend, this study describes the development, design, assembly, and operation of a 3-D printable open source desktop nutating mixer, which provides a fixed 20° platform tilt angle for a gentle three-dimensional (gyrating) agitation of chemical or biological samples (e.g., DNA or blood …


Impact Of Diy Home Manufacturing With 3d Printing On The Toy And Game Market, Emily Peterson, Joshua M. Pearce Jul 2017

Impact Of Diy Home Manufacturing With 3d Printing On The Toy And Game Market, Emily Peterson, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

The 2020 toy and game market is projected to be US$135 billion. To determine if 3D printing could affect these markets if consumers offset purchases by 3D printing free designs, this study investigates the 100 most popular downloaded designs at MyMiniFactory in a month. Savings are quantified for using a Lulzbot Mini 3D printer and three filament types: commercial filament, pellet-extruded filament, and post-consumer waste converted to filament with a recyclebot. Case studies probed the quality of: (1) six common complex toys; (2) Lego blocks; and (3) the customizability of open source board games. All filaments analyzed saved the user …


Three Hundred And Sixty Degree Real-Time Monitoring Of 3-D Printing Using Computer Analysis Of Two Camera Views, Siranee Nuchitprasitchai, Michael C. Roggemann, Joshua M. Pearce Jul 2017

Three Hundred And Sixty Degree Real-Time Monitoring Of 3-D Printing Using Computer Analysis Of Two Camera Views, Siranee Nuchitprasitchai, Michael C. Roggemann, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

Prosumer (producing consumer)-based desktop additive manufacturing has been enabled by the recent radical reduction in 3-D printer capital costs created by the open-source release of the self-replicating rapid prototype (RepRap). To continue this success, there have been some efforts to improve reliability, which are either too expensive or lacked automation. A promising method to improve reliability is to use computer vision, although the success rates are still too low for widespread use. To overcome these challenges an open source low-cost reliable real-time optimal monitoring platform for 3-D printing from double cameras is presented here. This error detection system is implemented …


Free And Open Source 3-D Model Customizer For Websites To Democratize Design With Openscad, Yuenyong Nilsiam, Joshua M. Pearce Jul 2017

Free And Open Source 3-D Model Customizer For Websites To Democratize Design With Openscad, Yuenyong Nilsiam, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

3-D printing has entered the consumer market because of recent radical price declines. Consumers can save substantial money by offsetting purchases with DIY pre-designed 3-D printed products. However, even more value can be obtained with distributed manufacturing using mass customization. Unfortunately, the average consumer is not technically sophisticated enough to easily design their own products. One solution to this is the use of an overlay on OpenSCAD parametric code, although current solutions force users to relinquish all rights to their own designs. There is thus a substantial need in the open source design community for a libre 3-D model customizer, …


Energy Payback Time Of A Solar Photovoltaic Powered Waste Plastic Recyclebot System, Shan Zhong, Pratiksha Rakhe, Joshua M. Pearce Jun 2017

Energy Payback Time Of A Solar Photovoltaic Powered Waste Plastic Recyclebot System, Shan Zhong, Pratiksha Rakhe, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

The growth of both plastic consumption and prosumer 3-D printing are driving an interest in producing 3-D printer filaments from waste plastic. This study quantifies the embodied energy of a vertical DC solar photovoltaic (PV) powered recyclebot based on life cycle energy analysis and compares it to horizontal AC recyclebots, conventional recycling, and the production of a virgin 3-D printer filament. The energy payback time (EPBT) is calculated using the embodied energy of the materials making up the recyclebot itself and is found to be about five days for the extrusion of a poly lactic acid (PLA) filament or 2.5 …


Open Source Multi-Head 3d Printer For Polymer-Metal Composite Component Manufacturing, J. Laureto, Joshua M. Pearce Jun 2017

Open Source Multi-Head 3d Printer For Polymer-Metal Composite Component Manufacturing, J. Laureto, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

As low-cost desktop 3D printing is now dominated by free and open source self-replicating rapid prototype (RepRap) derivatives, there is an intense interest in extending the scope of potential applications to manufacturing. This study describes a manufacturing technology that enables a constrained set of polymer-metal composite components. This paper provides (1) free and open source hardware and (2) software for printing systems that achieves metal wire embedment into a polymer matrix 3D-printed part via a novel weaving and wrapping method using (3) OpenSCAD and parametric coding for customized g-code commands. Composite parts are evaluated from the technical viability of manufacturing …


Me-Em Enewsbrief, June 2017, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University Jun 2017

Me-Em Enewsbrief, June 2017, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.


An Improved Electron Pre-Sheath Model For Tss-1r Current Enhancement Computations, Chunpei Cai Mar 2017

An Improved Electron Pre-Sheath Model For Tss-1r Current Enhancement Computations, Chunpei Cai

Michigan Tech Publications

This report presents improvements of investigations on the Tethered Satellite System (TSS)-1R electron current enhancement due to magnetic limited collections. New analytical expressions are obtained for the potential and temperature changes across the pre-sheath. The mathematical treatments in this work are more rigorous than one past approach. More experimental measurements collected in the ionosphere during the TSS-1R mission are adopted for validations. The relations developed in this work offer two bounding curves for these data points quite successfully; the average of these two curves is close to the curve-fitting results for the measurements; and an average of 2.95 times larger …


Me-Em Enewsbrief, March 2017, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University Mar 2017

Me-Em Enewsbrief, March 2017, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.


The Influence Of Bmss On The Characterization And Modeling Of Series And Parallel Li-Ion Packs, Sandra Castano-Solis, Daniel Serrano-Jimenez, Lucia Gauchia, Javier Sanz Feb 2017

The Influence Of Bmss On The Characterization And Modeling Of Series And Parallel Li-Ion Packs, Sandra Castano-Solis, Daniel Serrano-Jimenez, Lucia Gauchia, Javier Sanz

Michigan Tech Publications

This work analyzes the effects of a BMS (battery management system) on the characterization and modeling of series and parallel connections of Li-ion cell packs. The Li-ion pack studied consists of four series modules connected in parallel. This pack has been characterized by means of charge, discharge and frequency tests. As a result of these tests, series and parallel influence on battery parameters have been determined. A model considering the effects of a BMS is established and compared with a model based on a single-cell approach. Experimental validations show that the single cell based approach gives poor results in comparison …


A New Gaskinetic Model To Analyze Background Flow Effects On Weak Gaseous Jet Flows From Electric Propulsion Devices, Chunpei Cai Jan 2017

A New Gaskinetic Model To Analyze Background Flow Effects On Weak Gaseous Jet Flows From Electric Propulsion Devices, Chunpei Cai

Michigan Tech Publications

Recent work on studying rarefied background and jet flow interactions is reported. A new gaskinetic method is developed to investigate two closely related problems. The first problem is how a collisionless background flow can affect a highly rarefied jet flow. The rarefied jet and background flow conditions are assumed available and described with seven parameters. Gaskinetic theories are applied and formulas are obtained for the mixture properties. Simulations are performed to validate these expressions, and excellent agreement is obtained. The second problem is to recover the collisionless background and jet flow parameters with limited measurements. A group of linearized equations …


Surface Ozone And Its Precursors At Summit, Greenland: Comparison Between Observations And Model Simulations, Yaoxian Huang, Shiliang Wu, Louisa J. Kramer, Detlev Helmig, Richard E. Honrath Jan 2017

Surface Ozone And Its Precursors At Summit, Greenland: Comparison Between Observations And Model Simulations, Yaoxian Huang, Shiliang Wu, Louisa J. Kramer, Detlev Helmig, Richard E. Honrath

Michigan Tech Publications

Recent studies have shown significant challenges for atmospheric models to simulate tropospheric ozone (O3/and its precursors in the Arctic. In this study, ground-based data were combined with a global 3-D chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) to examine the abundance and seasonal variations of O3 and its precursors at Summit, Greenland (72.34° N, 38.29° W; 3212 ma.s.l.). Model simulations for atmospheric nitrogen oxides (NOx/, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), ethane (C2H6/, propane (C3H8/, carbon monoxide (CO), and O3 for the period July 2008-June 2010 were compared with observations. The model performed well in simulating certain species (such as CO and C3H8/, but some significant …