Applied Mechanics Commons^™

Mathematical Modeling Of A Two Wheeled Robotic Base, Kathryn Remell

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis presents the concept of using a two wheeled robot on the moon and briefly explores the requirements for successful long term operation in a lunar environment. The mathematical model for the motion of a robot with two fixed wheels on a differential drive with in a global reference frame. The robot is assumed to be balancing a platform so the mathematical model to balance the platform with wheel motors is also developed and briefly evaluated.

In-Service Performance Evaluation Of Concrete Sloped End Treatments In Iowa, Jessica Lingenfelter

Mechanical (and Materials) Engineering -- Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Sloped end treatments were historically developed as low-cost, low-maintenance end treatments for rigid features like concrete barriers and bridge rails. Crash testing indicated that sloped end treatments are associated with significant instability for impacting vehicles. However, the in-service performance of these features has not been evaluated. An in-service performance evaluation (ISPE) was performed to evaluate vehicle crashes with sloped end treatments in Iowa between 2008 and 2017. Researchers generated a geographic inventory of sloped end treatment locations, reviewed crash narratives and scene diagrams for crashes near these sloped end treatments, and calculated an estimated crash rate and crash cost for ...

Golf Swing Trainer Using Wii Balance Board, Brooks M. Leftwich, Nicholas Hassler, Clark A. Hall, Sam Gates, Thomas B. Vickery, Alec Rinehart, Zakkary B A Compton, Ryan A. Singley

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Sae Baja Drivetrain, Troy Von Gillern, Kaitlyn Elmer, Nathan Tabor

Scholar Week 2016 - present

A project to optimize the drivetrain on the ONU SAE Baja Team vehicle.

Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge, Jacob Torrey, Kayla Londono, Bryson Chan, Aaron Trujillo

Mechanical Engineering

The FPVC combines mechanical engineering disciplines to design and manufacture a vehicle that utilizes hydraulic power. The FDR covers the final manufacturing process and verification processes developed during the front end of research and analysis built upon the Critical Design Review (CDR) and the PDR (Preliminary Design Review). This report showcases the design decisions and extensive research that supports the continuing efforts by the Team Pump My Ride, to build upon the accomplishments of Cal Poly’s previous team, The Incompressibles. The FDR presents how Team Pump My Ride produced the design changes from the CDR and PDR to achieve ...

Supermileage Vehicle Drivetrain Design, Griffin M. Kraemer, Kai Meter, Arya Mahdavian

Mechanical Engineering

The current Cal Poly Supermileage team has faced issues regarding the efficiency and durability of their SMV vehicle’s drivetrain. After conducting research to solve their current issues, we developed a final drivetrain configuration that will improve the performance and life of the vehicle. This report outlines some of the completed research including: a table of designs used by other teams, a table of patents that can be applied to our design, and a list of technical literature we can use to better our design. It also summarizes our goals and objectives, including a table of the engineering specifications of ...

Tabletop Mechanical Tester, Jamie Dombroski, Andrew Shirk, Richard Leffler, Brian English

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The need for hands-on and face-to-face experiences in the engineering classroom is very great. The equations, principles, and concepts can all be learned, but without the visual and tactile application, these don’t always sink in or become concrete. A small-scale tensile test machine was designed, sourced, manufactured, and tested for the purpose of being applied in classroom settings to provide this experience to engineering students. Extensive research was performed concerning tensile machines on the market, the essential elements of which are the load cell, grips, crosshead, extensometer, motor, and frame. The raw materials for the frame were purchased and ...

Zips Electric Racing Suspension Design, Madison Hughes, Christopher Thompson, Erikah Jackson, Anna Signorino

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

I am working with three others on the suspension and steering sybsystems for the Zips Electric Racing design team at The University of Akron. We are improving upon last year's design to help create an optimized vehicle. As part of this project, we take part in weekly design reviews and team meetings, model parts in Solidworks, and perform simulations and FEA using MATLAB/SIMULINK, Solidworks, and Optimum Kinematics.

Automated Runout Measurement Tool, Ethan Tisch

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

A new measurement process and tool is to be developed to improve the existing method for measuring runout on the commutators of brushed DC product.

After an armature is manufactured, the commutator is inspected by placing the completed rotor assembly in one of several non-standard measurement fixtures. An indicator is then positioned on the commutator. A trained operator proceeds to rotate the armature while taking runout and bar-to-bar measurement at various positions along the length of the commutator.

This existing process is slow, costly, and unreliable. For these reasons, there is substantial economic pressure to develop a superior method for ...

Human Powered Vehicle Internal Systems Design, Zachary Broadbent, Jordan Boos, Patrick Gaertner, Caleb Miner

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of this design project is to redesign the seat and steering system for the Human Powered Vehicle Team. The goal of the seat design is too improve ergonomics by making it more comfortable and adjustable. In making the seat adjustable, it will be easier for drivers to achieve an optimal efficiency when pedaling. The aim for steering will be to improve the ergonomics as well as performance by analyzing steering systems in the past and evaluating how each design was successful and for what reason. Another main goal of the steering system will be improving the stability and ...

Modeling Thin Fluid Film On A Rotary Bell, Mark Doerre

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

A component of the mission in the Institute of Research for Technology Development at the University of Kentucky is advancing research and development and bringing it to the factory floor for continuous improvement. This dissertation delves into the art and science of rotational fluid mechanics in the context of rotary bell atomizers. One outcome proves that an approximation for calculating fluid film thicknesses on high-speed spinning surfaces inferred while working in cylindrical and spherical coordinate systems can be applied to an arbitrary bell profile. However, the analytical limits of this approximation were not investigated. In all cases, a restriction exists ...

Hilti Circular Saw Redesign 2020, Lucas Whitmer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The M.K. Morse company currently produces a 6 1/2 inch circular saw blade for the power tool company Hilti. The design has many areas for improvement and can be made at a reduced cost. Our group plans to use our knowledge that we have gained in our academic careers and the knowledge we gained on co-op to improve the life and reduce the overall cost of production of this blade. We plan to use Thirdwave Finite Element Analysis Cutting Software to test different tip geometries and a design of experiments to test the blade in the various construction ...

Multiscale Modeling Of Carbon Fibers/Graphene Nanoplatelets/Epoxy Hybrid Composites For Aerospace Applications, Hashim Al Mahmud

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Significant research effort has been dedicated for decades to improve the mechanical properties of aerospace polymer-based composite materials. Lightweight epoxy-based composite materials have increasingly replaced the comparatively heavy and expensive metal alloys used in aeronautical and aerospace structural components. In particular, carbon fibers (CF)/graphene nanoplatelets (GNP)/epoxy hybrid composites can be used for this purpose owing to their high specific stiffness and strength. Therefore, this work has been completed to design, predict, and optimize the effective mechanical properties of CF/GNP/epoxy composite materials at different length scales using a multiscale modeling approach. The work-flow of modeling involves a ...

Modeling And Tuning Of Cvt Systems For Sae® Baja Vehicles, Sean Sebastian Skinner

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Continuously variable transmission (CVT) describes a family of transmission styles. These systems serve the same purpose as their traditional counterparts; transmitting power while offering a variable gearing ratio. The difference lies in the CVT’s ability to change ratio continuously between a minimum and maximum without halting power transfer. They offer many benefits of an automatic transmission while being significantly lighter. For this reason, CVTs are often used on Baja SAE^® vehicles to control gearing ratio.

WVU’s Baja team has used mechanical CVTs for many decades. These systems are simpler in the sense that they don’t require power ...

Quantitative Peel Test For Thin Films/Layers Based On A Coupled Parametric And Statistical Study, Maysam Rezaee, Li Chih Tsai, Muhammad Istiaque Haider, Armin Yazdi, Ehsan Sanatizadeh, Nathan P. Salowitz

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Articles

The adhesion strength of thin films is critical to the durability of micro and nanofabricated devices. However, current testing methods are imprecise and do not produce quantitative results necessary for design specifications. The most common testing methods involve the manual application and removal of unspecified tape. This overcome many of the challenges of connecting to thin films to test their adhesion properties but different tapes, variation in manual application, and poorly controlled removal of tape can result in wide variation in resultant forces. Furthermore, the most common tests result in a qualitative ranking of film survival, not a measurement with ...

Failure Of High Strength Concrete Under Dynamic Uniaxial Compression, Colin Loeffler

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

The failure strength of concrete materials has been widely shown to be dependent on experimental parameters such as specimen geometry and strain-rate. The effects of specimen geometry have been shown both theoretically and experimentally to be a result of the quasi-brittle nature of concrete. While the failure strength of concrete has been widely reported to increase significantly when deformed at high strain-rates, the physical mechanisms driving this phenomenon remain the source of debate amongst researchers. This means that constitutive models designed to predict this rate dependent behavior are not based on the real physical mechanisms that drive this behavior but ...

An Immersogeometric Formulation For Free-Surface Flows With Application To Marine Engineering Problems, Qiming Zhu, Fei Xu, Songzhe Xu, Ming-Chen Hsu, Jinhui Yan

Mechanical Engineering Publications

An immersogeometric formulation is proposed to simulate free-surface flows around structures with complex geometry. The fluid–fluid interface (air–water interface) is handled by the level set method, while the fluid–structure interface is handled through an immersogeometric approach by immersing structures into non-boundary-fitted meshes and enforcing Dirichlet boundary conditions weakly. Residual-based variational multiscale method (RBVMS) is employed to stabilize the coupled Navier–Stokes equations of incompressible flows and level set convection equation. Other level set techniques, including re-distancing and mass balancing, are also incorporated into the immersed formulation. Adaptive quadrature rule is used to better capture the geometry of ...

Design And Kinematic Analysis Of A Semi-Compliant Swashplate Mechanism, Niko Giannakakos

Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (GURC)

Compliant mechanisms generate motion through the deformation or deflection of its flexible members rather than the revolute joints utilized in traditional rigid link mechanisms. If a compliant mechanism is designed as a single piece without the need of joints to create relative motion, then it is a monolithic system. If at least one part of the mechanism is flexible and assembled with rigid parts and joints, then it is a partially compliant mechanism. The superiorities of compliant mechanisms over rigid mechanisms are the reduced number of parts required to build the system, simple design, no backlash, no lubrication, less friction ...

#49 - Optimization Redesign Of Cargo Ship Hopper, Carson Wiles, Rafael Escamilla, Max James Ryan, Juan Bautista

Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (GURC)

There are current designs of hoppers that are sitting on the port where cargo ships enter. The ships have large crane buckets that move material from the ship to dump trucks by means of funnel. The top portion of this funnel is a hopper that calls for a redesign. Some main dilemmas with the hopper are that it is easily damaged by the crane bucket, gives off a lot of dust debris, and is difficult to mobilize. Our project redesign looks to add a stronger support hopper that is resistant to damage and a dust ventilation system that reduces dust ...

Design Of A Monolithic Compliant Swimming Robot, Joshua Hooper, Andy Houghton

Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (GURC)

Compliant mechanisms use the flexibility of their members to transfer an input displacement, force or torque to another point on the mechanism through the large deformation of its flexible links or joints. Fewer number of links, no friction, no backlash and simple design are the most important features that make them an ideal candidate when light weight, low cost and high performance are desired. The only challenge while designing a compliant mechanism is deriving the equations of motion as flexible links or flexure hinges go under large deformation.

We designed a monolithic compliant swimming robot consists of a dc motor ...

Senior Design 1 Product Proposal, Chase Newberry, John Redwine

Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (GURC)

People have climbed for millennia, but only in recent years has rock climbing acquired recognition as a legitimate sport. Modern rock-climbing culture is centralized on pushing one’s limits to the extreme. As such, falling is an eventuality for those seeking a challenge. Luckily, falling is not a death sentence for the modern climber. Protective equipment has advanced in parallel with human ability, and fall-arresting gear is now widely available to the public.

One of the most popular types of protective climbing gear is the cam (figure 1). As they are now manufactured by numerous companies, cams designs vary, but ...

Influence Of Flow Rate, Nozzle Speed, Pitch And The Number Of Passes On The Thickness Of S1805 Photoresist In Suss Microtec As8 Spray Coater, Rohan Sanghvi, Gyuseok Kim

Tool Data

S1805 positive photoresist has been deposited on single crystalline Si wafers using a Suss MicroTec Alta Spray. The influence of flow rate, nozzle speed, pitch and number of passes on the thickness of the photoresist was studied. Results show that the thickness of S1805 is linearly proportional to the flow rate and number of passes, and inversely proportional to the nozzle speed and pitch.

The Hydrodynamics And Heat Transfer Of Impinging Jet Flow And Circular Hydraulic Jump, Yunpeng Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The laminar axisymmetric flow and heat transfer of a circular impinging jet and hydraulic jump on a solid surface is analyzed theoretically using boundary-layer and thin-film approaches. Liquid jet impingement features many applications such as jet rinsing, jet cooling, liquid atomization and chemical reactors. The associated hydraulic jump dramatically affects the performance of the heat and mass transfer in such applications. In the current thesis, the effects of inertia, surface tension, surface rotation, gravity and heat transfer are comprehensively explored for impinging jet flow and the formation of hydraulic jump.

The boundary-layer heights and film thickness are found to diminish ...

General Nonlinear-Material Elasticity In Classical One-Dimensional Solid Mechanics, Ronald Joseph Giardina Jr

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

We will create a class of generalized ellipses and explore their ability to define a distance on a space and generate continuous, periodic functions. Connections between these continuous, periodic functions and the generalizations of trigonometric functions known in the literature shall be established along with connections between these generalized ellipses and some spectrahedral projections onto the plane, more specifically the well-known multifocal ellipses. The superellipse, or Lam\'{e} curve, will be a special case of the generalized ellipse. Applications of these generalized ellipses shall be explored with regards to some one-dimensional systems of classical mechanics. We will adopt the Ramberg-Osgood ...

Baja Sae Ecvt Mechanical Design, Tyler Lee Connel, Will Daniel Antes, Matt Stephen Balboni, Benjamin James Colard, Julian Edward Finburgh

Mechanical Engineering

This objective of this project was to design, manufacture, and test the mechanical systems of an electronically-controlled continuously variable transmission (eCVT) for the Cal Poly Baja SAE vehicle.

Mechanical Performance Of Structural Systems With Missing Members: From Buildings To Architected Materials, Panagiotis Pantidis

Doctoral Dissertations

Structural systems are potentially subjected to damage initiating scenarios throughout the course of their service time. Depending on the nature and extent of the damaging event, they may experience significant reduction or even complete loss of their mechanical performance. This dissertation delves into the mechanics of structural systems under the notion of missing members from their domain, investigating types of structural systems: a) multi-story steel framed buildings, and b) materials with a truss-lattice microstructure.

Part I of the dissertation investigates the performance of multi-story steel framed buildings under a column removal scenario, developing an analytical framework for their quasi-static robustness ...

Investigation Of Fundamental Principles Of Rigid Body Impact Mechanics, Khalid Alluhydan

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

In impact mechanics, the collision between two or more bodies is a common, yet a very challenging problem. Producing analytical solutions that can predict the post-collision motion of the colliding bodies require consistent modeling of the dynamics of the colliding bodies. This dissertation presents a new method for solving the two and multibody impact problems that can be used to predict the post-collision motion of the colliding bodies. Also, we solve the rigid body collision problem of planar kinematic chains with multiple contacts with external surfaces.

In the first part of this dissertation, we study planar collisions of Balls and ...

Experimental And Theoretical Evaluation Of The Effect Of Panel Geometry On The Failure Of Corrugated Board Panel, Takashi Takayama, Katsuhiko Saito, Akira Higashiyama

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

McKee’s formula is widely used to predict the compression strength (CS) of corrugated boxes and panels. It can accurately estimate the compression strength of boxes that are within a practical size range, but recently, larger and smaller corrugated boxes than before have been extensively developed. Therefore, there is a need for a CS prediction formula that works beyond the application range of McKee’s formula. Recent researches consider the failure mode as a combination of collapsing and buckling failure and remove the constraints and the assumptions associated with McKee’s formula. This makes it possible to more accurately estimate ...

Effect Of The Nonlinear Material Viscosity On The Performance Of Dielectric Elastomer Transducers, Yuanping Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

As a typical type of soft electroactive materials, dielectric elastomers (DEs) are capable of producing large voltage-induced deformation, which makes them desirable materials for a variety of applications in transduction technology, including tunable oscillators, resonators, biomimetics and energy harvesters. The dynamic and energy harvesting performance of such DE-based devices is strongly affected not only by multiple failure modes such as electrical breakdown, electromechanical instability, loss-of-tension and fatigue, but also by their material viscoelasticity. Moreover, as suggested by experiments and theoretical studies, DEs possess nonlinear relaxation processes, which makes modeling of the performance of DE-based devices more challenging.

In this thesis ...

Uav Catapult, Sean Drew Huxley, Benjamin Richard Lacasse, David Matthew Garcia, Jordan Joseph Cearns

Mechanical Engineering

This document outlines the Senior Design Project proposed by Dr. Aaron Drake that was assigned to a team of Mechanical Engineering students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The purpose of this project was to design, build, test, and finalize a launching system for two small, fixed wing, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) owned by Dr. Drake and Cal Poly. The goal was to create a system that was both portable and reliable to use, only requiring a two-person team to use effectively in the field. The most important design requirements were determined to be the launch speed, assembly ...