Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Ng-Torque/Tension Testing Of Bolts With Epoxy Primer, Gabrielle Van Brunt

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This capstone project is in conjunction with Northrop Grumman (NG). The goal of the project is for NG to apply an epoxy in the future to aerospace structures that they produce. This epoxy is meant to prevent corrosion of threaded joints in the structures. Although NG has the epoxy and has no issues procuring it, NG does not know the properties of the epoxy; it cannot be used until the epoxy’s nut factor is experimentally determined. The epoxy nut factor will be used for design and drawing purposes on various projects. To determine the nut factor, the Aggiepoxy team created …

Small Spacecraft Thermal Control Louvers, James Anthony Mullen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Small satellites missions are becoming increasingly complex and are requiring more power. These demands lead to temperature fluctuations on the satellite due to spacecraft layout, sunlight and shadow in orbit, and high-powered instrumentation. Products which provide necessary thermal stability for components on the satellite are desirable to small satellite manufacturers.

In September of 2015, Dr. Allison Evans of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center filed a patent for an innovative louver system configured for small satellite applications. The design was sized for satellites with a 1U form factor and utilized bimetallic springs to lift the louver flaps. The design was …

Coin Recovery Ii, Carly Lofthouse

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Western Metals Recycling (WMR), a subsidiary of NUCOR Steel, is a metals recycling company with a location in Plymouth, Utah. At Plymouth, a 50 NT/hr. non-ferrous recovery plant uses eddy current technology to generate a non-ferrous product called zorba. Zorba is a mix of aluminum, copper, brass, zinc, printed circuit boards, coins, lead, and the like. (Figure 1) The market value of zorba varies but generally ranges from $0.30 to $0.50 per pound. The value of the coins (not including pennies) is much higher than zorba price. The team's objective is to upgrade and optimize the existing trommel equipment to …

Third-Eye, Aaron Fassler

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Third-Eye Device is a peripheral device compatible with any firearm equipped with the Picatinny rail system. Its system of a camera attached to the weapon which connects to an eyepiece allows the user to aim the weapon without aiming down the sights. This device is potentially crucial to those who regularly engage in close-quarters combat such as police and military specialists, whose ability to quickly and accurately clear rooms during operations is critical to their safety and the safety of others. The student team was tasked with improving the device, primarily in its survivability in dusty and wet environments, …

Arm Position Measurement, Silvia Smith

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This capstone project addresses the design and implementation of a device that measures arm position and speed. The device is intended for use in conducting further research on the motion of limbs affected by cerebral palsy, and in the prototypic development of a device that could help control such motion, thereby allowing a user to accomplish daily tasks. This project includes the design of an appropriate experiment and testing apparatus to explore possible solution prototypes, along with suggested methods to perform analysis of the experiment results. This is considered to be the fundamental research necessary to better understand the scope …

Software Defined Radio System For Cubesat Communication, Tyler Gardner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Cube satellites, or CubeSats, are small satellites designed around a base unit cube of 10 cm by 10 cm by 10 cm which is commonly referred to as a one unit, or 1 U, CubeSat. The modular architecture of CubeSats allows multiple 1 U frames to be stacked together to form a larger (1.5U, 2U, usually up to 6U) frame as needed. Because CubeSats are cheaper to develop and deploy in orbit than larger satellites, they have become increasingly common for academic, amateur, commercial, and scientific applications over the past five to ten years. There is potential that CubeSats will …

Rickshaw For Common Ground, Marcus Dallin Cronin

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

For this project my team and I were asked to design and manufacture a rickshaw, a device which will enable disabled individuals to experience outdoor hiking trails, for a non-profit organization based in Logan, Utah called Common Ground. Common Ground specializes in helping people with disabilities experience the outdoors in ways that would otherwise be impossible. The rickshaw will help Common Ground achieve its goals by providing them with a way to transport people with disabilities on moderately difficult hiking trails (i.e. Wind Caves Trail in Logan Canyon). In the past, Common Ground had use of a rickshaw that had …

Coorstek- Spine Discectomy, Rhett Prestwich, Logan Bolingbroke, Ryan Thomsen, Aaron Blanchard, Kayla Park

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The objective is to design improved instrumentation for performing a spine discectomy. In particular, the instrument should remove the nucleus pulposus without damaging the annulus in order to prepare the spine disc for the insertion of an artificial spacer. As more nucleus pulposus is removed from the disc, the spine will fuse more quickly and completely after the artificial spacer is inserted. The current process involves removing the nucleus pulposus piece by piece with pituitary rongeurs. This process is slow and often incomplete.

Design Baseline Document: Mini Baja Frame, Michael Luke Scoggins

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Our objective as the Mini Baja Frame team is to design and implement a prototype vehicle frame that is both cost-effective and competitive in an all-terrain racing environment. This vehicle must be able to endure the trials of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Mini Baja competition. An effective frame will contribute to the complete Utah State University Mini Baja Team objectives by efficiently integrating the components produced by the drivetrain and the suspension engineers. In addition, this competition is a means for us as students to gain valuable, tangible experience in the engineering design process.

Xhab Microgravity Food Growth Chamber, Nathan I. Stacey

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

NASA and other organizations are preparing to send humans deeper into space, including a NASA manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, in order to learn more about our universe and the origin of life and to ensure the survival of the human race. Long journeys in space require efficient, dependable, and sustainable methods to provide for astronauts' metabolic needs such as oxygen, water, and food. In order for microgravity plant growth chambers to become a viable solution, several challenges encountered by past growth chambers must be resolved.

One problem with existing space food growth chambers is hypoxia, or lack …

Pedicle Lengthening Spacer, David S. Wood

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In the lumbar region of the spine, the spinal cord travels through a small hole in your vertebrae called the spinal canal. There is a medical condition where the spinal canal becomes restricted. This condition is called stenosis. There are several reasons for this pinching of the spinal column. These include the growth of bone spurs, the accumulation of ligaments in the canal, or a genetic trait. When these occur in the lower five vertebrae (the lumbar region), it is called lumbar stenosis. The symptoms of Lumbar Stenosis are shooting pain through the legs, especially during activity, and feelings of …

Design For Reduction Of Noise Produced By Natural Gas Regulator, Britany L. Chamberlain

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This document describes the design of a multi-stage restrictive orifice device (MSRO) that serves to reduce the noise produced by a regulator valve. The scope of this document explains the determination of the proper design through the development of analytical models, the design of a test fixture to obtain empirical data, and the corroboration of the models with empirical data to obtain a working solution.

Binding Innovation Technologies, Restoring Freedom To The World Of Snowboard Bindings, Matthew Lee Munsee

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Snowboarding technology has progressed by leaps and bounds since the sport's inception in the 1980's. However, there is one area that has gotten progressively worse. That area is flexibility and freedom of expression. In order to make the sport safer, the industry responded by making stiffer boots and bindings. Our goal is to bring back the high level of flexibility that built the sport while maintaining or exceeding current safety standards. We also need to reduce heel side shock so as to increase the comfort of the rider. Our design consists of three major systems that drastically increase flexibility, safety, …

Personal Vacuum Assisted Climber, Jacob Monroe Whittle

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Personal Vacuum Assisted Climber (PVAC) system built in 2012 by the Ascending Aggies at Utah State University which was designed using vacuum motors to provide suction to pads to allow the user to climb various surfaces, needs to be further developed before being fully marketable. The current system does not have a user-friendly interface and is very loud (approx. 90 dB). These issues were addressed to answer the following question: how can the current PV AC system be optimized to decrease noise and produce a user friendly interface while maintaining current run time? To obtain the sound reduction desired …

Design And Construction Of An Omni-Directional Soccer Ball Thrower, Andrew James Marquette

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Introduction

We are ODST the Omni-Directional Soccer Ball Thrower team which designed the soccer ball launching machine. Working in direct correlation with the project sponsor John Meade from Athlonic Sports this is the report outlining the soccer ball thrower. John from Athlonic Sports came up with the overall project and initial project vision. There are soccer ball launching machines on the market but lacking mobility, not amiable and are heavy. The design needed to be mobile, amiable, lightweight, and have a soccer ball capacity incorporated into the machine. This will allow coaches to repeatability place the soccer ball in certain …

Analysis And Design Of A Thermal Capacitor For Use In The Food Industry, Karen Nielson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Team Hot Stuff is working with Thermal Management Technologies (TMT) of Logan, UT to explore the concept of a thermal capacitor serving platter. With the funding from TMT, Hot Stuff will design, build, and test a prototype serving platter. This report is written by Hot Stuff for MAE 4800, Capstone Design I; it covers the design and analysis of a serving platter.

Transformable Wheelchair, Benjamin Shurtz

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This report includes the development, design, and analysis of a transformable wheelchair. There was a need to design and build a wheelchair that transformed to be pushed, pulled, or self-propelled. This design meets the need of physically restricted wheelchair users who frequent simple hiking trails without needing to move to a secondary off-road capable device. Documentation for concepts, analysis, and completed design details follows.

Design And Optimization Of A Thermal Capacitor, Karen Nielson, Jordan Tracy Cox

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Team Hot Stuff designed a thermal capacitor for Senior Design I at Utah State University. This thermal capacitor is intended for use in the food service industry as a low-cost alternative to chafers. Chafers are platters which use oil burners to keep food warm. The client for this thermal capacitor is Thermal Management Technologies (TMT), a company specializing in thermal science solutions whose mission is “to provide simple, practical thermal science solutions to a wide range of platforms including: Industry, Defense, and Space”¹. The founder and president of TMT, Dr. J. Clair Batty, serves as a mentor for …

Re-Configurable Putting Green, Matthew Ralphs

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This report discusses the design of a prototype transformable putting green that can be programmed to recreate the topography of any putting green. The goal of the design was to give a realistic putting experience with real topography in an indoor environment. This report discusses the design of a pair of 4’x4’ module prototypes; a commercial implementation of this design would utilize a number of modules to create putting greens on a more realistic scale (example 12’x32’). The design of a full size transformable putting green necessitates a topographical range of up to 30”. After initial concepts and preliminary designs …

Reduced Gravity Landing Research Vehicle Design, Sarah Isert

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Human and robotic missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO) are key components of NASA's currently emerging strategy for space exploration. These missions will inevitably include humancrewed lunar and planetary surface landings. Trips to near-earth asteroids are also in the incipient planning stages. A permanent presence on the surface of an extra terrestrial body like Mars or the Moon will require many landings by both human-crewed and robotic spacecraft.

Planetary and lunar surface landings are inherently dangerous undertakings, and successful landings are indeed rare events. Since the end of the Apollo era with the completion of the Apollo 17 mission in …

Driveline For The Usu 2006 Mini Baja, Daniel Chase Swenson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Mini Baja project is part of an intercollegiate engineering design competition sponsored by SAE. For this competition senior engineering students at USU design and build a small off-road racecar. The design of the car is broken up into several different subassemblies. The driveline subassembly is responsible for transmitting the power from the transmission to the rear wheels. This is accomplished using several different components that have all been analyzed and designed. The completed driveline is able to accommodate sixteen inches of suspension travel, is lightweight, and was inexpensive to build. The driveline along with the rest of the car …

Thermoacoustic Refrigerator, Nathan A. Hammond

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Thermoacoustic refrigerators have typically been designed to cool an isolated working fluid, necessitating a heat exchanging device to draw heat from the outside target fluid into the cooled working fluid. For example, a thermoacoustic refrigerator designed to chill air might utilize argon as an isolated working fluid, necessitating a heat exchanger to draw heat from the air to the argon. A second heat exchanger would be required to draw heat from the argon to a cold sink.

A design team at Utah State University has created a thermoacoustic refrigerator which uses air at atmospheric pressure as its working fluid. By …

Remote Freedom, Dominic M. Florin

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Increasing mobility is a key to ensuring that a disabled child feels accepted and as normal as possible. The object of Remote Freedom is to provide an inexpensive design that will modify a toy vehicle so that it can run remotely. The case that we designed for was a child with cerebral palsy. Originally the toy vehicle on the market needed major modifications both for the safety of the child and the addition of the remote control The main components that were added were a safety harness, a roll bar and motors to control steering and speed.

It was discovered …

Dual Adaptive Recumbent Trike, Jason V. Eastman

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The DART team's objective was to develop a tandem recumbent tricycle that would be economical, easy to build, and adaptable. This would involve designing, building and testing the tricycle.

Research And Design Of A High L/D Aircraft, Blake Ashby, Gregory Nielson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This senior design team, consisting of Blake Ashby, Shelly Barlow, Greg Nielson, Deryl Snyder, and Chris Wright, designed, built, and flew an airplane that met the requirements of the Cessna/ONR Student Design/Build/Fly Competition sponsored by AIAA. This radio-controlled airplane was designed to fly the most laps around a course in seven minutes using only 2.5 pounds of NiCad batteries. A total of three senior design teams from Utah State University designed separate airplanes. Though all three teams designed, built, and tested complete airplanes, each emphasized a different aspect of a successful entry. This team emphasized theoretical and numerical analysis in …

Freezing Point Mobile Munitions Assessment Sytem: Thermal Chamber Redesign, Sara Gifford, Preston Harris

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Army is actively investigating non-intrusive methods to identify six chemical weapons agents. The chemical munitions in question are often found scattered across military bases and other facilities. These non-stockpile munitions are specifically targeted for identification using the mobile munitions assessment system. This program is being administered by the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

Optimization Of Torquer Coil Design For Use With The Small Satellite Attitude Control Simulator, David Deloyd Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This paper presents a procedure used to optimize the performance of a ferromagnetic core magnetic torquer coil design for use on the Space Dynamics Laboratory (Logan, UT) Small Satellite Attitude Control Simulator. The items of optimization include the primary goal of maximizing the coil 's magnetic moment while reducing power consumption and system mass within given power, mass, and dimensional constraints. The optimization process makes use of several simple equations to determine a few starting points for design, after which an iterative approach based on experimentation is used to produce the final design. It is found that optimal magnetic moment …

Advanced Rover Chassis, Eric Alan Poulson, Collin Lewis, Todd Graves

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Background:

The six wheeled rover vehicle detailed in this design is intended as an upgrade test bed for the sensor array and autonomous navigation algorithms in use by Utah State University's Center for Self-Organizing and Intelligent Systems (CSOIS). The CSOIS's sensor suite can successfully detect and avoid unnavigable obstacles up to five vehicle lengths in front of the vehicle. The center presently uses a modified RC type chassis and only supports two wheel drive. This chassis was adequate to bring the CSOIS's algorithms to a proof-of-principles state, but in order to place the system in any practical application, a full …

Final Design Report Of The Design Of A Climate Controlled Sleeping Chamber For Infants And Toddlers, Jennifer Stenger Stevens

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

A climate controlled sleeping chamber, or air crib, for infants and toddlers is an alternative sleeping medium to the conventional crib. It is a chamber that is ventilated with air that is temperature and humidity controlled to provide an optimum sleeping environment for young children, ages 0 to 2 years. Its purpose is to enhance the psychological and physiological development of young children. Because it is easier to heat a small chamber than larger living quarters, the air crib also has economic advantages.

The design o climate controlled sleeping chamber must meet some minimum requirements. The system must provide an …