Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Cal Poly Wind Power: Wind Turbine Prototype, Sophie A. Spencer, Maggie Nevrly, Michael Reyna, Loi Q. Nguyen

Mechanical Engineering

The Cal Poly Wind Power (CPWP) club is competing in the Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC) hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The CWC is hosted annually by NREL to increase the number of skilled workers prepared to work in the wind energy industry. Our senior project team is one of several design teams contributing to the CPWP prototype turbine design including the pitching mechanism, blade design, generator, and shaft. The scope of this project is to design the yaw mechanism, tower, and nacelle. The goal is to create components that function well with other planned components and are …

Sustainable Energy Storage, Jacob S. Grillo, Alyse C. Coonce, Jack R. Linchey, Nick P. Schnorr

Mechanical Engineering

This Final Design Review document covers the work we, students at California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo, have performed in collaboration with Mr. Harish Bhutani and Dr. Mohammad Noori. The project’s intent is to create an energy storage system for off-grid and developing region applications using alternative technologies to lithium-ion battery storage. We plan to manufacture and assemble a scale model of the energy storage system to prove effectiveness and practicality. This system will store enough energy to power basic appliances and essential devices for a house or community. The chosen design direction will be a flywheel, as …

Smud Solar Regatta, Logan Garby, Nam Le, Jacob Singer, Alejandro Carrera, Laura Casas

Mechanical Engineering

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) hosts the Solar Regatta every year in Rancho Seco, CA, a competition which consists of teams building a solar powered boat to compete in three races: the sprint race, endurance race, and slalom race. The Cal Poly Solar Regatta team was informed mid-project by SMUD that the competition has been canceled once again for spring 2021, but the team decided to move forward with the construction of the boat. The previous Cal Poly team from 2019/2020 designed the hull and propulsion system of the boat. The 2020/2021 team worked with the previous team in …

Veloelectric: Creating A Device That Harvests Energy From Bicycles, Austin Hall, Daniel Stohr, Tj Fox

Mechanical Engineering

Long distance mountain bikers, bike-packers, and many bikers in developing countries rely on electrical devices for safety and communication. These specific groups of people operate in areas with little to no electricity, and often times have no power to sustain their devices. The purpose of this Cal Poly senior project, VeloElectric, was to design, build, and test a kinetic energy harvester for bicycles that can be used to charge common mobile devices via USB. This senior project team created a device that attaches directly to a bicycle and uses vibrations to generate energy, which in turn powers a variety of …

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 …

Energy Generator Exploration Station Senior Project Report, Evan Carr, Christopher Scharff, Andrea Govea

Mechanical Engineering

The mission of Team EnGen is to create a safe and reliable, human powered energy generation system for the Exploration Station. This project was proposed by the Exploration Station in response to a grant received by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) that allocated funds for an energy conservation exhibit. This system will take the form of a model energy truck and a darkened neighborhood display that the user powers through peddling, turning the generator to create the electricity that will light up the display. The Exploration Station and Team EnGen agree that this style of design is accessible to all …

Technology Portal For Energy Efficient Buildings, Larry D. Hermanson, Daniel Studer, Annie Mroz

STAR Program Research Presentations

Project: Technology Portal for Energy Efficient Buildings

Date: August 2, 2012

Author: Larry Hermanson

Mentor: Daniel Studer

Cohort: Annie Mroz

Lab site: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Buildings account for 71% of the electricity demand and 39% of the primary energy consumption in the United States. The Commercial Buildings Group at NREL provides builders, designers and building owners accurate information to significantly improve the energy efficiency of new and existing buildings. The Technology Portal for Energy Efficient Buildings will increase the accessibility of standardized and credible energy performance data for all building systems, thereby allowing building owners to better evaluate …

Pump Sequencing Optimization, John S. Allan, Kyle J. Nekimken, Spencer B. Weills

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this document is to demonstrate the design, production, and testing of optimum pump sequencing logic for variable frequency drive (VFD) pumps in commercial heating ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. The product will be developed by Pump Efficiency Solutions (PES), which is a group of Cal Poly students working on their senior project. The product is being developed for Trane, an industry leader in large scale HVAC systems. MATLAB™, Microsoft Excel, Pump System Improvement Modeling Tool™ (PSIM), and fluid mechanics hand calculations were used during software development. Next, we converted the program into Trane’s graphical programming language …

Composite Manufacturing Of Small Wind Turbine Blades- Utility Scale Methods Applied To Small Wind, Bryan Kyle Edwards

Master's Theses

Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo’s first wind turbine explores the methods and processes that are employed to manufacture utility scale wind turbines, and applies them to small scale wind turbines. The primary objective is to promote the development of small scale wind turbine blades in ways that resemble, as closely as possible, the construction and methods of utility scale turbine blade manufacturing. Vacuum infusion is employed to create a hollow, multi piece, lightweight design using carbon fiber and fiberglass with an epoxy based resin. A “rapid prototyping” method is developed using high density foam molds that allows short cycle time …

Harvesting Human Exercise Power At The Cal Poly Rec Center: Exercise Bike Power Generator Ii, Jared Rounsevell, Claire M. Shubert, Matthew Snitowsky, Andrew Wong

Mechanical Engineering

The overall goal of this project is to create a workable system to harvest the power generated on exercise bikes at the Cal Poly Rec Center so that the electricity produced can eventually be sent to the power grid. Our part of the project will focus on the mechanical harvesting of this power with the goal of using the product to run the Morningstar ProStar 12V 30 amp charge controller available from the 2007 project. Eventually, the power produced could be fed to the grid in the appropriate form. The finished result of this project should be marketable to exercise …