Applied Mechanics Commons^™

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Motor Control Systems Analysis, Design, And Optimization Strategies For A Lightweight Excavation Robot, Austin Jerold Crawford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis entails motor control system analysis, design, and optimization for the University of Arkansas NASA Robotic Mining Competition robot. The open-loop system is to be modeled and simulated in order to achieve a desired rapid, yet smooth response to a change in input. The initial goal of this work is to find a repeatable, generalized step-by-step process that can be used to tune the gains of a PID controller for multiple different operating points. Then, sensors are to be modeled onto the robot within a feedback loop to develop an error signal and to make the control system self-corrective …

The Effect Of Incorporating End-User Customization Into Additive Manufacturing Designs, Jonathan D. Ashley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the realm of additive manufacturing there is an increasing trend among makers to create designs that allow for end-users to alter them prior to printing an artifact. Online design repositories have tools that facilitate the creation of such artifacts. There are currently no rules for how to create a good customizable design or a way to measure the degree of customization within a design. This work defines three types of customizations found in additive manufacturing and presents three metrics to measure the degree of customization within designs based on the three types of customization. The goal of this work …

Microstructural Analysis Of Thermoelastic Response, Nonlinear Creep, And Pervasive Cracking In Heterogeneous Materials, Alden C. Cook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with the development of robust numerical solution procedures for the generalized micromechanical analysis of linear and nonlinear constitutive behavior in heterogeneous materials. Although the methods developed are applicable in many engineering, geological, and materials science fields, three main areas are explored in this work. First, a numerical methodology is presented for the thermomechanical analysis of heterogeneous materials with a special focus on real polycrystalline microstructures obtained using electron backscatter diffraction techniques. Asymptotic expansion homogenization and finite element analysis are employed for micromechanical analysis of polycrystalline materials. Effective thermoelastic properties of polycrystalline materials are determined and compared …

Experimental Building Demonstration Model With Viscous Fluid Dampers, Blake Thomas Reeve, Brianna Jean Kufa, Aden Malek Stepanians, Sophie Carmion Ratkovich

Architectural Engineering

The Architectural Engineering major places a heavy emphasis on structural dynamics and the role of wind and seismic loading in building analysis and design. Buildings of high importance that are critical to community function, such as hospitals, often utilize supplemental damping devices like supplemental viscous fluid dampers or base isolators to reduce the overall demands on the structural system. The design and analysis of these dampers are typically not taught at the undergraduate level, and is frequently performed by mechanical engineers, in lieu of structural engineers.

To better understand and research building behavior with supplemental damping devices, our multi-disciplinary team …

Meshless Mechanics And Point-Based Visualization Methods For Surgical Simulations, Rifat Aras

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Computer-based modeling and simulation practices have become an integral part of the medical education field. For surgical simulation applications, realistic constitutive modeling of soft tissue is considered to be one of the most challenging aspects of the problem, because biomechanical soft-tissue models need to reflect the correct elastic response, have to be efficient in order to run at interactive simulation rates, and be able to support operations such as cuts and sutures.

Mesh-based solutions, where the connections between the individual degrees of freedom (DoF) are defined explicitly, have been the traditional choice to approach these problems. However, when the problem …

Computational Dynamics For The Flexible Multi-Body System, Yu Liu

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Research in computational dynamics has tremendously developed in the recent years because of the demand for analysis and simulation of various multi-body systems in the growing bio-medical, mechanical and aerospace industries. These multi-body systems are made of individual bodies that are interconnected via mechanical joints. Mathematically, these joints that connect the bodies can be described as constraint equations imposed upon the motions of the involved free bodies. This process will result in an equation of motion expressed in the form of a differential-algebraic equation (DAE). This is one of the main difficulties when dealing with the multi-body system because these …

Parallel Mpi/Fortran Finite Element Symmetrical/Unsymmetrical Domain Decomposition, Siroj Tungkatara

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

MPI/FORTRAN finite element analysis software based on Domain Decomposition (DD) formulas has been developed in this work. Efficient input data storage/data communication schemes, domain partitioning, fast symbolical and numerical sparse assembly, symmetrical/unsymmetrical sparse solver and robust symmetrical/unsymmetrical iterative solvers algorithms are all incorporated into the developed code. Parallel Precondition Conjugated Gradient (PCG) and Flexible Generalized Minimum Residual (FGMRES) are developed. Efficient computational techniques used in the developed code are explained. Numerical performance and the accuracy of the developed code are conducted on acoustic examples with medium to large grid sizes. The results obtained from ODU Wilbur cluster (under parallel processing …

Virtual Reality Modelling Of A Cnc Machine, Damian O'Sullivan

Theses

The increasing importance of training and upgrading skills has led to the use of new interactive technologies in the development of more effective training tools. Previous techniques for training Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine operators, while excellent for their time, varied from brief inexpensive tutorials to expensive on the job training. A CNC machine uses a computer to perform the functions of the machine using a part program stored in the memory of the computer. This thesis describes a Virtual Reality (VR) model of a CNC milling machine, implemented within a VR environment representing a CNC workshop. Its development and …