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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering

Design, Manufacture, And Structural Dynamic Analysis Of A Biomimetic Insect-Sized Wing For Micro Air Vehicles, Jose Enrique Rubio Dec 2017

Design, Manufacture, And Structural Dynamic Analysis Of A Biomimetic Insect-Sized Wing For Micro Air Vehicles, Jose Enrique Rubio

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The exceptional flying characteristics of airborne insects motivates the design of biomimetic wing structures that can exhibit a similar structural dynamic behavior. For this purpose, this investigation describes a method for both manufacturing a biomimetic insect-sized wing using the photolithography technique and analyzing its structural dynamic response. The geometry of a crane fly forewing (family Tipulidae) is acquired using a micro-computed tomography scanner. A computer-aided design model is generated from the measurements of the reconstructed scanned model of the insect wing to design the photomasks of the membrane and the venation network required for the photolithography procedure. A composite …


Aerodynamic Centers Of Arbitrary Airfoils, Orrin Dean Pope Dec 2017

Aerodynamic Centers Of Arbitrary Airfoils, Orrin Dean Pope

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The study of designing stable aircraft has been widespread and ongoing since the early days of Orville and Wilbur Wright and their famous Wright Flyer airplane. All aircraft as they fly through the air are subject to minor changes in the forces acting on them. The field of aircraft stability seeks to understand and predict how aircraft will respond to these changes in forces and to design aircraft such that when these forces change the aircraft remains stable. The mathematical equations used to predict aircraft stability rely on knowledge of the location of the aerodynamic center, the point through which …


Aerodynamic Drag On Intermodal Rail Cars, Philip Donovan Kinghorn Jun 2017

Aerodynamic Drag On Intermodal Rail Cars, Philip Donovan Kinghorn

Theses and Dissertations

The freight rail industry is essential to the US infrastructure and there is significant motivation to improve its efficiency. The aerodynamic drag associated with transport of commodities by rail is becoming increasingly important as the cost of diesel fuel increases. For intermodal railcars a significant amount of aerodynamic drag is a result of the large distance between containers that often occurs and the resulting pressure drag resulting from the separated flow that results due to their non-streamlined shape. This thesis reports on research that has been done to characterize the aerodynamic drag on intermodal train builds and allow their builds …


An Experimental Study On Drag Reduction Of Aftermarket Additions On An Suv, Christiana L. Katsoulos May 2017

An Experimental Study On Drag Reduction Of Aftermarket Additions On An Suv, Christiana L. Katsoulos

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Over recent years, the awareness of climate change has become more prevalent worldwide and one major contributor to global warming has been the use of transportation. Vehicles contribute to global warming by releasing petroleum based emissions such as significant amounts of carbon dioxide and numerous other harmful environmental pollutants. SUVs contribute to the emissions problem more so than sedans, since they have lower gas mileage and need more gasoline regularly. The main functionality of sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, includes hauling or off-roading and fuel efficiency is not always the focus in the design process. However, aerodynamic enhancements could improve …


Investigation Of A Novel Turbulence Model And Using Leading-Edge Slots For Improving The Aerodynamic Performance Of Airfoils And Wind Turbines, Saman Beyhaghi May 2017

Investigation Of A Novel Turbulence Model And Using Leading-Edge Slots For Improving The Aerodynamic Performance Of Airfoils And Wind Turbines, Saman Beyhaghi

Theses and Dissertations

Because of the problems associated with increase of greenhouse gases, as well as the limited supplies of fossil fuels, the transition to alternate, clean, renewable sources of energy is inevitable. Renewable sources of energy can be used to decrease our need for fossil fuels, thus reducing impact to humans, other species and their habitats. The wind is one of the cleanest forms of energy, and it can be an excellent candidate for producing electrical energy in a more sustainable manner. Vertical- and Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT and HAWT) are two common devices used for harvesting electrical energy from the wind. …


Numerical Analysis Of A Flapping Elliptic Flat Plate In Hover: A Study Of Leading Edge Vortex Dynamics, C. Vivek Nair May 2017

Numerical Analysis Of A Flapping Elliptic Flat Plate In Hover: A Study Of Leading Edge Vortex Dynamics, C. Vivek Nair

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses

Flapping flight is an area of research that is gaining a lot of prominence in engineering, especially with the increase in interest in applying the flapping mechanism of natural fliers to small scale MAVs. The ongoing contributions to this field include studies finding optimal wing shape, flap frequency, and flap trajectories. Flapping flight is an unsteady aerodynamic mechanism, and consists of 3 interactive forces: delayed stall, rotational circulation, and wake capture. The dominant lift generating mechanism is the leading edge vortex (LEV). Natural fliers optimize their flap to gain maximize LEV stability. For our research we simulate 2 cases of …


3d Cfd Investigation Of Low Pressure Turbine Aerodynamics, Jacob Andrew Sharpe Jan 2017

3d Cfd Investigation Of Low Pressure Turbine Aerodynamics, Jacob Andrew Sharpe

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

A 3-D Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) model of a highly-loaded blade profile has been developed using a commercial CFD code with an unstructured/structured grid and several different turbulence models. The ability of each model to predict total pressure loss performance is examined in terms of the spanwise loss distribution and the integrated total pressure loss coefficient. The flowfield predicted by each model is investigated through comparisons of isosurfaces of Q criterion to previous Implicit Large Eddy Simulation (ILES) results. The 3-equation k-kl-¿ model was shown to provide the most accurate performance predictions for a baseline 3-D LPT geometry, and was …