Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

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

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 …

Incorporating Student Reflection Into Engineering Courses, Nancy Barr

TechTalks

Critical reflection as students move through their disciplinary curriculum is one way to cultivate capacity for critical thinking. By embedding opportunities for critical reflection in disciplinary courses, educators can combine aspects of writing theory, metacognitive learning, and critical pedagogy to help students begin to frame how they will apply their skills and talents to problems effecting diverse populations. The new undergraduate ME curriculum combines applied learning and project-based learning methods in a series of four ME Practice courses. Technical communication instruction is also embedded in these courses, and the “capstone” of each course is a reflective essay. By responding to …

Space Mining Is Almost Here!, Paul Van Susant

TechTalks

When going to the Moon and Mars for extended stays with humans it is required to minimize mass by "living off the land" as soon as possible. Mining local resources and using them to produce consumables and construct simple structures can leverage launch mass to the surface of those bodies. In addition, asteroid mining will be able to provide rocket fuel to further spur economic development in CIS-Lunar space and further open up solar system activities. I am working on mining on Mars and the Moon as well as construction using local rocks.

New Concepts In Evolutionary Algorithms For Systems Architecture Optimization, Ossama Abdelkhalik

TechTalks

This talk will present recent developments in evolutionary algorithms that focus on the systems architecture optimization. One challenge in systems optimization is the variable number of design variables. Three new concepts will be presented in this talk that enable evolutionary algorithms to handle this type of problems more efficiently. The first is the biologically inspired concept of Hidden Genes that implements tags to cover/uncover genes in the variables' code, which enable handling variable number of variables in evolutionary algorithms. The second concept is a structured chromosome approach that transcripts the variables in a multi-layer code as opposed to the standard …

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

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 …

Distributed Control System For Parallel-Connected Dc Boost Converters, Steven Goldsmith

Michigan Tech Patents

The disclosed invention is a distributed control system for operating a DC bus fed by disparate DC power sources that service a known or unknown load. The voltage sources vary in v-i characteristics and have time-varying, maximum supply capacities. Each source is connected to the bus via a boost converter, which may have different dynamic characteristics and power transfer capacities, but are controlled through PWM. The invention tracks the time-varying power sources and apportions their power contribution while maintaining the DC bus voltage within the specifications. A central digital controller solves the steady-state system for the optimal duty cycle settings …

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

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

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

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

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

Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

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 …

Professional Development, Outreach, And Technology Awareness With The Mobile Lab, Jeremy Worm

TechTalks

The Mobile Lab is a one of a kind mobile event facility operated by the Advanced Power Systems Research Center (APS LABS). The Mobile Lab travels the country providing hands-on Professional Development short courses, STEM Outreach, and as a venue for increasing awareness of new technologies. The Mobile Lab consists of a classroom, two full-functional powertrain test cells, a fleet of over 25 vehicles, and a chassis dynamometer. The configurability of the Mobile Lab enables support of virtually any technical or non-technical short course or outreach. The Mobile Lab commands attention, generating large crowds at conferences, expos, and community events, …

Model-Driven Design Of Materials, Gregory M. Odegard

TechTalks

Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” The Edisonian approach to materials development has been the gold standard for most of human history. However, advances in computational speeds and modeling techniques over the last couple of decades have enabled new model-driven approaches to materials development, as manifested in the Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) and Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) efforts. By designing and simulating new materials in a computational environment, we can dramatically cut down on the cost and time associated with the Edisonian approach to material development. At Michigan Tech, …

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

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 …

Persistent Operation Of Mobile Robots, Nina Mahmoudian

TechTalks

Success of numerous unmanned mobile missions in space, air, ground, and water is measured by the ability of the robots to usefully operate for extended time in dynamic and uncertain environments. This talk will provide an overview of the recent progress towards performing autonomous long-term missions. The approach includes task and energy routing scheduling, efficient path planning and coordination, and low-infrastructure platforms. The goal is to provide practical solutions by lowering deployment and operating costs, while also increasing efficiency, endurance and persistence during complex missions like disaster responses and long-term science discoveries.

Doe Apra-E Nextcar Program On Connected And Automated Vehicles In Collaboration With Gm, Jeffrey D. Naber

TechTalks

Within the $3.5M ARPA-e NEXTCAR program, Michigan Tech in collaboration with GM will development and demonstrate on a fleet of eight 2017 Chevrolet Volts and a mobile connected cloud computing center, a Vehicle Dynamics and Powertrain (VD&PT) model-based predictive controller (MPC) encompassing a real-time VD&PT dynamic model leveraging vehicle conductivity (V2X) with real-time traffic modeling and predictive speed horizons and eco-routing. The objective is to achieve a minimum of 20% reduction in energy consumption (electric + fuel) through the first ever real-time implementation and connection of route planning, powertrain energy management MPC algorithms. Connectivity data from vehicles, infrastructure, GPS, traffic …

Wire Neutralization System, Scott A. Bradley, Jason Wiitanen, Timothy B. Smigowski, John T. Niemeyer, Andrew Culkin

Michigan Tech Patents

A wire neutralizing system for use with a vehicle including a frame adapted to be hitched to a vehicle. At least one wheel supports the frame while a bottom of the wheel rolls over terrain having buried wires. The system also includes a blade movable between a stowed position in which the blade is above the bottom of the wheel and a deployed position in which the blade is below the bottom of the wheel, such that the blade plows through the terrain to disable buried wires when in the deployed position.

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 …

Me-Em 2016-17 Annual Report, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Annual Reports

Table of Contents

• Undergrad Features
• Graduate Features
• Enrollment & Degrees
• Graduates
• Faculty & Staff
• Department News
• Alumni
• Donors
• Contracts & Grants
• Patents & Publications

Utilizing Reprap Style 3d Printers For The Manufacturing Of Composite Heat Exchangers, John Laureto

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The low cost 3D printing market is currently dominated by the application of RepRap (self-replicating rapid-prototyper) variants. Presented in this document are practical utilizations of RepRap technology. Developed are innovative processes to manufacture composite materials systems for thermal management solutions.

First, a laser polymer welder system is validated by quantifying maximum peak load and weld width of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) lap welds as a function of linear energy density. The development of practical engineering data, in this application, is critical to producing mechanically durable welds. Developed laser and printer parameter sets allow for manufacturing of LLDPE multi-layered heat …

Development Of An Evaporation Sub-Model And Simulation Of Multiple Droplet Impingement In Volume Of Fluid Method, Sathya Prasad Potham

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Droplet collision and impingement on a substrate are widely observed phenomenon in many applications like spray injection of Internal Combustion Engines. Existing Lagrangian models do not provide a comprehensive picture of the outcome of these events and may involve model constants requiring experimental data for validation. Physics based models like Volume of Fluid (VOF) method involve no parametric tuning and are more accurate. The aim of this thesis is to extend the basic VOF method with an evaporation sub-model including an additional vapor phase and implement this model in an open source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software, OpenFOAM. The new …

A 3d Fem Comparative Study On The Impact Response Between Human Head And Nocsae Head Due To Free Fall, Amey S. Badhe

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

We all enjoy sports be it watching or playing. Concussion is well known topic when it comes sports related injuries. However, concussion and brain injury is not exclusive to sports and outdoor activities. Sometimes, even the impact due to slip and fall at small heights can cause serious damage to the head and brain. This report studies the response generated in the human head model and the commercially use dummy NOCSAE headform due to drop from height of 2, 3, 4 and 5 feet. Earlier studies have related brain kinetics and head kinematics to concussion and traumatic brain injury (TBI). …

Heat Transfer Analysis In A Paddle Reactor For Biomass Fast Pyrolyis, Ankith Ullal

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Heat transfer analysis was performed on a novel auger reactor for biomass fast pyrolysis. As part of this analysis, correlations for specific heat capacity and heat transfer coefficients for biomass (sawdust) and sand (used as heat transfer medium) were developed. For sand, the heat transfer coefficient followed a power law distribution with reactor fill level and temperature. For raw biomass, the heat transfer coefficient also showed similar dependence on fill level, but was independent of temperature up to 300°C. These correlations were used in a one dimensional heat transfer model developed to calculate the heating time and heating rate of …

Nanotextured Titanium Surfaces For Implants: Manufacturing And Packaging Aspects, Sachin Bhosle

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

It has been shown that nanotexturing the surface of otherwise smooth titanium orthopedic materials increases osteoblast proliferation in vitro, and the bone-implant contact area and pullout force in vivo. However, this prior work has not focused on the requirements for scale-up to industrial processes. This dissertation reports on titanium surface modifications by electrochemical anodization using a benign NH₄F electrolyte, and a hybrid electrolyte also containing AgF, rather than hazardous hydrofluoric acid used elsewhere. Nanotube fabrication of Ti6Al4V foils, rods, thermal plasma sprayed commercial implants, and laser and e-beam melted powder materials was demonstrated.

It was found …

Computational Studies On Biomechanics Of Concussion And On Efficacy Of Football Helmets, David Labyak

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Football helmets have been used for many years to prevent head injuries to players. Over the years, the helmet design has evolved from a crude leather head covering to the more recent form fitting helmets that are seen today. The one design feature that has been common in the majority of all helmets is a hard polycarbonate shell with a foam cushion padding. The main goal of the padding layer was to reduce the amount of linear acceleration during an impact event. The one feature that has been overlooked is how stiff the padding is in rotation.

The purpose of …