Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Compression Tester Shop Press, Colby Johnson, Brett Russon, Taylor Vandenhoek

Mechanical Engineering

A piece of machinery designed to carry out compression and bending tests on building materials constructed by the Center for Vocational Building Technologies (CVBT) in Isarn, Thailand.

Multi-Axis Tripod Locking Mechanism, Glenn Carros, Hannah Gause, Matthew Theiss

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Bikeshare Business Model For Cal Poly- San Luis Obispo, Justin Benson, Andrew Neil Gatchalian

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

With the increasing admittance of students into colleges and universities across the nation, the need for alternate modes of transportation is becoming more pressing. College and university campuses, as well as small cities, in which there is a college or university, are being overloaded with student cars. In San Luis Obispo specifically, parking on campus as well as downtown can be extremely difficult to find. Traffic is also getting progressively worse, especially at the hour when class begins/ends and student arrive to or leave campus. Financial reasons are yet another deterrent for students at Cal Poly. Parking permits, gas, and …

Redesign Of Talley Farm's "Fresh Harvest" Produce Program, Nicole Bordwell, John Rivera, Jared Toboni

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Fresh Harvest, a Central Coast Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program run by Talley Farms located in Arroyo Grande, CA, has a rapidly growing customer base. They harvest, package, and deliver boxes of fresh quality produce to almost 3000 subscribers. However, Talley Farms’ space for production and processing is limited and at times required for other aspects of business. This results in a problem where Talley Farms current processing system of produce for the Fresh Harvest program is not suitable for the forecasted growing demand. This report addresses the need to prepare for continued significant growth to the demand for Fresh …

Process Improvements Of Cilantro Harvesting With Ergonomic Considerations, Eric Penningroth, Branden Shimamoto

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The problems presented by Talley Farms to the team were a lower than desired cilantro harvesting capacity and work health pertaining to lower back problems. The project objectives were to address and improve upon both of these objectives. To increase harvesting capacity, a simulation model was created using standard times from time studies. The simulation model helped to compare the different harvesting methods as well as the effect of the utilization of the on-site manager. The throughputs between each of the models were analyzed. To address ergonomic concerns, a work sampling study was conducted and it was determined that kneeling …

Effects Of Patient Factors On Implantation Rates In In Vitro Fertilization, Heidi Richardson, Sofia Soto

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The purpose of this report is to evaluate the effects of patient factors and embryo quality on the implantation rate in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). For this report, statistical methods are used to test the significance of several patient and embryo characteristics on embryo implantation rate. This project is an analysis of data collected from over 36,000 patients.

The analysis concluded several findings. There was enough statistical evidence to conclude that age was significant in regards to implantation rate and FSH levels. As the patient ages, the amount of FSH levels found in their blood increases. A patient with high …

Analysis And Improvement Of The Security Building At Pg&E Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, Alyssa Carter, Natalie Christa, Phuong Anh Pham Dinh

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

A new Security building was recently designed and built at the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP).This building’s staff and equipment are responsible for performing routine inspections on all personnel entering the facility in order to prevent security-related incidents from occurring at the nuclear power plant. Similar to airport security procedures, the DCPP security building routine inspections include the use of x-ray machines, metal detectors, and explosive detectors.

The Power Plant periodically experiences pre-planned, preventive maintenance outages, that last 4-6 weeks. During an outage, a power plant reactor is shut down for maintenance, repair, and re-fueling. …

Cold Roll Extrusion Machine Redesign Final Design Report, Foja Bains, Bryan Cyr, David Van Schooten

Mechanical Engineering

This report is a comprehensive review of a redesign of subsystems for a Cold Roll Extrusion Machine, a forging operation, for PCC Rollmet. Three subsystems were addressed in this project: A new Loading system, Feed system, and Lubrication system. The Loading system, and support system during developmental design stages, addressed the timely loading process of pipes onto the forging machine. After two quarters of design iteration, the group decided on a lever arm, hydraulic actuated, loading design. In the final quarter of the project, a quarter scale model of this lever arm was constructed to prove the concept of the …

Aeroponic/Hydroponic Growth Module, Sean Marrs, Joshua Moreno

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Mhttu Implementation Final Project Report, Angelica Ramirez, Julian Samayoa, Matt Keeble

Mechanical Engineering

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has invested considerable effort in developing fireproof high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. Due to the nature of LLNL’s research, the air leaving its lab facilities must be filtered before it is released into the atmosphere; thus, each laboratory is equipped with large banks of HEPA filters through which all internal air is exhausted. Over the years, however, fires have erupted in the labs and entire banks of HEPA filters have been destroyed, resulting in repairs and crucial downtime that prove costly.

Engineers and scientists alike have been seeking a permanent solution to this problem, and one …

Cal Poly India Project, Derek Babine, Austen Hibler, Alex Hernandez

Mechanical Engineering

This report documents the research, ideation, and development of a solution, implemented by the Cal Poly India Sanitation Team per the request of Mr. Harish Bhutani, to solve the problem of hazardous human waste management in poor villages in India. The sponsor envisioned a universal design that would give each household in those villages access to a private toilet system because the current solution is open defecation in water sources and farming fields. The initial constraints required the project be low cost, not use of electricity or water, have the ability to cater to an 8-10 person household, and be …

Machine Shop Learning Kits, Samantha Kelley, Ellen Chambers

Mechanical Engineering

Currently in the Cal Poly Machine shops, students are struggling to find ways to fulfill the 10 hours of shop experience required to gain their Yellow Tag certification. Red Tag is the first level of certification students generally achieve their freshman year. It allows them to use basic machine tools such as drills, shears, benders, etc. Then after completing 10 hours of shop experience they can take the Yellow Tag test, which gains them access to use a welder, mill, and lathe. The heads of the machine shop, the shop technicians, and the mechanical engineering students will all have different …

Semi-Automated Glass Mat Splice Operation For Asphalt Shingle Line, Justin Bracci, Harry Zhao, Chad Linafelter

Mechanical Engineering

The following report details the senior project sponsored by GAF Materials Corporation, Shafter, CA in regards to semi-automating a glass-mat splicing table for asphalt roofing shingle production. Herein includes details, research, design, and analysis regarding the semi-automation of the gluing processes for the splicing table. A working prototype was manufactured and tested for the future implementation onto GAF’s production line or further senior project involvement.

Farmbot, James Cruz, Scott Herrington, Bryan Rodriguez

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this project was to develop the hardware for the current Farmbot to perform its primary functions, and to create a template for a system that would be adaptable for future users and developers. The scope of the project included creating a universal tool mount, a seeding system, and a watering and nutrient mixing system. This project was brought to the students by sponsor Rory Aronson, the creator of Farmbot. The Cal Poly Farmbot team was able to go through an extensive brainstorming and iterative process for each part, where testing was able to be incorporated immediately due …

Temperature Controlled Packaging Container For Biologics And Pharmaceuticals, Melinda Phan, Yufay Chow-Yee, Abraham Ho

Mechanical Engineering

Clinical Supplies Management, Inc. (CSM) provides clinical trial services to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies by shipping pharmaceuticals to clinics and other patients. In winter 2014, CSM presented a temperature control packaging project to the Cal Poly Senior Project class. As a result, three Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering Students were tasked to design, manufacture, and qualify a shipping container that would maintain ten 10 mL vials between 2-8°C for 96 hours. The final product would have to cost less to ship than the Credo Cube, CSM’s current temperature control packaging product. After considerable research and analysis on possible temperature control technologies, …

Wingtip Dynamics Simulator, Eugene Fox, Nick Rodriguez, Steven Rieber

Mechanical Engineering

Raytheon is a defense contracting company with an electronic warfare division that is developing a radio frequency signal triangulation system. Part of the focus in improving this technology is the need for accurate and real time locational knowledge of the signal receivers, which are located at the tips of aircraft wings. Due to turbulence during flight, the fluttering motion of the wings alter the distance and angle relationships of the two receivers and add noise to the received signal data, which negatively affect the triangulation estimates. To mitigate this error caused by the wing flutter, Raytheon is developing a software …

Electric Porsche Drivetrain Re-Design, Taylor Carlson, Quinton Petty, Spencer Treffry

Mechanical Engineering

The objective of this project was to redesign the drivetrain of the electric 1977 Porsche 911 Targa S with the goal of optimizing the drivetrain for motor efficiency and performance. The focus was to redesign the interface between the electric motor and rear wheels to maximize the efficiency of power transmission from the motor to the ground.

Two systems were proposed, a fixed gear reduction and two motors with an electronic differential. The fixed gear reduction was chosen to be designed and built by replacing the stock Porsche transmission with a differential featuring a favorable gear ratio for the electric …

Experiment And Simulation Of The Acoustic Signature Of Fatigued-Cracked Gears In A Two-Stage Gearbox, Matthew James Ostiguy

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on the development of a health monitoring system for gearbox transmissions. This was accomplished by developing and understanding a two-stage gearbox computer model that emulates an actual gearbox test rig. The computer model contains actual gearbox geometry, flexible shafts, bearings, gear contact forces, input motor torque, output brake torque, and realistic gearbox imbalance. The gear contact force of each gear stage and the input bearing translational acceleration were the main outputs compared between a healthy gearbox and damaged gearbox computer model. The damage of focus was a fatigue crack on the input pinion gear. A sideband energy …

Analysis And Optimization Of The Scheffler Solar Concentrator, Simone Alberti

Master's Theses

The Scheffler reflector is a new solar concentrator design which maintains a fixed focus while only having a single axis tracking mechanism. This design makes the construction and operation of high temperature solar concentrators accessible to developing nations. In this project, I wrote computer simulation codes to better understand the dynamics and the effect of deformation or deviations from ideal conditions in order to define necessary manufacturing and operational tolerances. These tools and knowledge drove the prototyping of new reflector concepts by myself and other students on my team. A fiberglass prototype was able to drive the cost of a …

Methane Production By A Packed-Bed Anaerobic Digester Fed Dairy Barn Flush Water, Sean Richard Thomson

Master's Theses

Packed-bed digesters are an alternative to covered lagoon digesters for methane production and anaerobic treatment of dilute wastewaters such as dairy barn flush water. The physical media of packed-beds retain biofilms, often allowing increased treatment rates. Previous studies have evaluated several types of media for digestion of dilute wastewaters, but cost and media fouling have setback commercial development. A major operational cost has been effluent recirculation pumping.

In the present effort, a novel approach to anaerobic digestion of flush dairy water was developed at pilot-scale: broken walnut shells were used as a low-cost packed-bed medium and effluent recirculation was replaced …

The Icon Horn Loudspeaker, Vincent Phan

Mechanical Engineering

A horn loudspeaker in layperson terms is essentially taking a megaphone and integrating it into a standard speaker. Similar to a cheerleader yelling into a megaphone, the horn loudspeaker will amplify the sound from the speaker with no additional power needed. Using standard speaker horn theory, the geometry of the “megaphone” can be engineered to tune the acoustic performance tailored to loudness and/or specific acoustics frequencies. The horn contours are similar to traditional orchestra instruments such as the French horn, trumpet, and tuba. The iconic beauty of a horn married with the quantitative engineering theory creates an aesthetic yet functional …

Team Nathan Suspension, Frankie J. Wiggins, Alex D. Seitz, Justin P. Bautista

Mechanical Engineering

Nathan Cooper is an 8-year old boy with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). SMA has affected Nathan’s muscle development and requires him to use the Standing Dani™ mobility device. The Standing Dani is a motorized standing wheelchair, or Wheelstand. Nathan controls and uses it to get around. Though the Standing Dani performs well for most functions, it has some distinct issues. The primary issue that this project addresses is its lack of suspension and the discomfort that Nathan feels as a result. After talking with our client, we developed several specifications generally related to geometry, safety, vehicle dynamics, and reliability. Many …

A Study Of Shock Analysis Using The Finite Element Method Verified With Euler-Bernoulli Beam Theory; Mechanical Effects Due To Pulse Width Variation Of Shock Inputs; And Evaluation Of Shock Response Of A Mixed Flow Fan, David Jonathan Gonzalez Campos

Master's Theses

A Study Of Shock Analysis Using The Finite Element Method Verified With Euler-Bernoulli Beam Theory; Mechanical Effects Due To Pulse Width Variation Of Shock Inputs; And Evaluation Of Shock Response Of A Mixed Flow Fan

David Jonathan González Campos

For many engineers that use finite element analysis or FEA, it is very important to know how to properly model and obtain accurate solutions for complicated loading conditions such as shock loading. Transient acceleration loads, such as shocks, are not as common as static loads. Analyzing these types of problems is less understood, which is the basis for this study. FEA …

Control Of A Spacecraft Using Mixed Momentum Exchange Devices, Blake J. Currie

Master's Theses

Hardware configurations, a control law, and a steering law are developed for a mixed hardware spacecraft that uses both control moment gyros and reaction wheels. Replacing one or more gyros in a spacecraft with a reaction wheel has potential for cost savings while still achieving much greater performance than using reaction wheels alone. Several simulated tests are run to compare the performance to a traditional all reaction wheel or all control moment gyro spacecraft, including analysis of failure modes and singular configurations. The mixed system performed similarly to all gyro systems, responding within 6% of the gyro system’s time for …

A Control-Chart Based Method For Solder Joint Crack Detection, Jianbiao Pan

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Many researchers have used different failure criteria in published solder joint reliability studies. Since the reported timeto-failure would be different if different failure criteria were used, it would be difficult to compare the reported reliability life of solder joints from one study to another. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of failure criteria on the reported thermal fatigue life and determine which failure criterion could detect failure sooner. First, the application of the control-chart-based method in a thermal cycling reliability study is described. The reported time-to-failure data were then compared based on four different failure criteria: …

Vibration Based Planetary Gear Analysis And Damage Detection, Rene Sawatzky

Master's Theses

With this thesis the research at the engineering department is continued, based on previous thesis projects. These projects were considering the possibility of simulation gears with rigid bodies. After researches with different emphasizes on the rigid body simulation, the gained knowledge showed limitations of the rigid body model. Gear failures are very diverse and the actual simulation technique could not represent all necessary failure modes that can occur. That led to this thesis as a research project to find a way to detect and analyze the failure modes that cannot be considered with the current rigid body approach. With the …

Foss Big Data Storage Solution, Nurdeen Salami

STAR Program Research Presentations

NASA projects require a reliable approach to store large volumes of data. Accordingly, it is crucial to adopt a lightweight, reliable, and scalable database. Current NASA databases bear costly license fees with undesirable speed and flexibility. The purpose of utilizing the AERO Institute as an IT test bed, or “Sandbox,” is to design, build, test, and implement software solutions prior to transfer to NASA projects. Cassandra coupled with the Astyanax API is a viable solution for storing big data. Store a minimum of 2GB of C-FOSS data in multiple file formats (.csv, .log, .xml, and .jpg). Use benchmark tests to …

Space Race: Capturing An Orbiting Sample And A Nation’S Imagination, Stephanie La Liberte, Andrew Chavarin, Shubham Gogna, C. Daniel Thomas, Vy Phung, Gabriel Udomkesmalee

STAR Program Research Presentations

A proposed architecture for future planetary sample return missions would consist of capturing on-orbit a sample container (collected from the surface of a planetary body and launched into space) and transferring the sample container into an earth return/reentry capsule. A challenge to this proposed architecture is integrating space applicable sensor technologies with sufficient capturing devices. While useful technologies on Earth, Earth-related rendezvous/capture technologies, such as magnetic field sensors, sound-based sensors, and Earth orbit-based radios like GPS, are not applicable to space. Inspired by the in-orbit sample capture challenge, NASA JPL has designed the Space Rendezvous And Capture Experiment (Space RACE). …

Cnc Torch, Steven Chiu

Computer Engineering

This CNC Torch cuts steel plate. It can cut up to a maximum area of 3x3 feet. The user builds a cut list on the touchscreen from a selection of predefined shapes and enters the parameters need for each shape. When the user is ready, the cut list is sent to an Arduino that will move each motors accordingly to the shapes desired.

Adaptive Basketball Shooter - Final Project Report, Jenna N. Becker, Richard A. Galanti, Justin D. Haley, Brett Y. Nayudu

Mechanical Engineering

The Friday Club is a joint venture between the Cal Poly Kinesiology Department and the San Luis Obispo Special Olympics that offers people with varying degrees of disability the opportunity to meet weekly and learn various sports and games. At Friday Club, athletes in wheelchairs with limited arm strength use devices built by Cal Poly mechanical engineering students in order to participate in various sports. Many devices are designed to attach to the Universal Play Frame (UPF), a wheel-chair attachment. The purpose of this project was to design and build a UPF device that will launch a basketball, so that …