Engineering Mechanics Commons^™

The Effect Of Noise On The Response Of A Vertical Cantilever Beam Energy Harvester, Michael I. Friswell, Onur Bilgen, S. Faruque Ali, Grzegorz Litak, Sondipon Adhikari

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

An energy harvesting concept has been proposed comprising a piezoelectric patch on a vertical cantilever beam with a tip mass. The cantilever beam is excited in the transverse direction at its base. This device is highly nonlinear with two potential wells for large tip masses, when the beam is buckled. For the pre-buckled case considered here, the stiffness is low and hence the displacement response is large, leading to multiple solutions to harmonic excitation that are exploited in the harvesting device. To maximise the energy harvested in systems with multiple solutions the higher amplitude response should be preferred. This paper …

An Operational Performance And Safety Comparison Of Roundabouts Vs. Traditional Intersections, Vincent Spahr

Honors Theses

As the modern roundabout becomes a more popular intersection alternative in the United States, the ability of the roundabout to effectively manage traffic and to do so safely is on the forefront of engineering concerns. Despite decades of international success and credibility, regions throughout the U.S. have been hesitant to implement roundabouts in place of more traditional intersections. This case study of a series of intersections in Dublin, OH assesses the operational performance of roundabouts as it compares to that of their stop-controlled and signalized counterparts and analyzes historical crash data to evaluate the safety of the various intersection types. …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, March 2015, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Suborbital Spaceflight: A Student Team’S Plan To Send A Rocket To Space, Bryce Chanes, William Carpenter, Julio Benavides, Matthew Haslam, Brenda Haven

Aviation / Aeronautics / Aerospace International Research Conference

The Eagle Space Flight Team was created with the goal of becoming the first undergraduate team to design, build, and launch a rocket capable of suborbital spaceflight. In order to achieve this goal, the team will have to design a rocket capable of atmospheric flight at speeds over Mach 5 and launch it on one of the largest amateur rocket motors ever made. Over the next three years, the team will progress towards accomplishing this feat through a series of incremental test flights. Before the space flight, the team will build three sub-scale rockets designed to reach altitudes of 30,000’, …

A Multi-Scale Based Model For Composite Materials With Embedded Pzt Filaments For Energy Harvesting, A.E. El-Etriby, M.E. Abdel-Meguid, K.M. Shalan, Tarek Hatem, Yehia Bahei-El-Din

Centre for Advanced Materials

Ambient vibrations are major source of wasted energy, exploiting properly such vibration can be converted to valuable energy and harvested to power up devices, i.e. electronic devices. Accordingly, energy harvesting using smart structures with active piezoelectric ceramics has gained wide interest over the past few years as a method for converting such wasted energy. This paper provides numerical and experimental analysis of piezoelectric fiber based composites for energy harvesting applications proposing a multi-scale modeling approach coupled with experimental verification. The multi-scale approach suggested predicting the behavior of piezoelectric fiber-based composites use micromechanical model based on Transformation Field Analysis (TFA) to …

Me-Em 2014-15 Annual Report, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Annual Reports

Table of Contents

• Human-centered Engineering
• Endowed Department Chair
• Enrollment & Degrees
• Graduates
• Department News
• Faculty & Staff
• Alumni
• Donors
• Contracts & Grants
• Patents & Publications
• Faculty & Staff Directory

Effects Of Forcing Time Scale On The Simulated Turbulent Flows And Turbulent Collision Statistics Of Inertial Particles, B. Rosa, H. Parishani, O. Ayala, L.-P. Wang

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

In this paper, we study systematically the effects of forcing time scale in the large-scale stochastic forcing scheme of Eswaran and Pope ["An examination of forcing in direct numerical simulations of turbulence," Comput. Fluids 16, 257 (1988)] on the simulated flow structures and statistics of forced turbulence. Using direct numerical simulations, we find that the forcing time scale affects the flow dissipation rate and flow Reynolds number. Other flow statistics can be predicted using the altered flow dissipation rate and flow Reynolds number, except when the forcing time scale is made unrealistically large to yield a Taylor microscale flow Reynolds …

High Temperature Flow Solver For Aerothermodynamics Problems, Huaibao Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

A weakly ionized hypersonic flow solver for the simulation of reentry flow is firstly developed at the University of Kentucky. This code is the fluid dynamics module of known as Kentucky Aerothermodynamics and Thermal Response System (KATS). The solver uses a second-order finite volume approach to solve the laminar Navier– Stokes equations, species mass conservation and energy balance equations for flow in chemical and thermal non-equilibrium state, and a fully implicit first-order backward Euler method for the time integration. The hypersonic flow solver is then extended to account for very low Mach number flow using the preconditioning and switch of …

Effects Of Gravity On The Acceleration And Pair Statistics Of Inertial Particles In Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence, H. Parishani, O. Ayala, B. Rosa, L.-P. Wang, W. W. Grabowski

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Within the context of heavy particles suspended in a turbulent airflow, we study the effects of gravity on acceleration statistics and radial relative velocity (RRV) of inertial particles. The turbulent flow is simulated by direct numerical simulation (DNS) on a 256³ grid and the dynamics of O(10⁶) inertial particles by the point-particle approach. For particles/droplets with radius from 10 to 60 µm, we found that the gravity plays an important role in particle acceleration statistics: (a) a peak value of particle acceleration variance appears in both the horizontal and vertical directions at a particle Stokes number …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, December 2014, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Biphilic Nanoporous Surfaces Enabled Exceptional Drag Reduction And Capillary Evaporation Enhancement, Xianming Dai, Fanghao Yang, Ronggui Yang, Xinyu Huang, William A. Rigdon, Xiaodong Li, Chen Li

Faculty Publications

Simultaneously achieving drag reduction and capillary evaporation enhancement is highly desired but challenging because of the trade-off between two distinct hydrophobic and hydrophilic wettabilities. Here, we report a strategy to synthesize nanoscale biphilic surfaces to endow exceptional drag reduction through creating a unique slip boundary condition and fast capillary wetting by inducing nanoscopic hydrophilic areas. The biphilic nanoporous surfaces are synthesized by decorating hydrophilic functional groups on hydrophobic pristine multiwalled carbon nanotubes. We demonstrate that the carbon nanotube-enabled biphilic nanoporous surfaces lead to a 63.1% reduction of the friction coefficient, a 61.7% wetting speed improvement, and up to 158.6% enhancement …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, September 2014, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Lightweight Uav Launcher, Ben Miller, Christian Valoria, Corinne Warnock, Jake Coutlee

Mechanical Engineering

This report discusses the design, construction, and testing of a lightweight, portable UAV launcher. There is a current need for a small team of soldiers to launch a US Marine Tier II UAV in a remote location without transport. Research was conducted into existing UAV launcher designs and the pros and cons of each were recorded. This research served as a basis for concept generation during the initial design development stage. It was required that the design weigh less than 110 lbs, occupy a smaller volume than 48" x 24" 18" in its collapsed state, be portable by a single …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, June 2014, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Me-Em Enewsbrief, March 2014, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Me-Em 2013-14 Annual Report, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Annual Reports

Table of Contents

• Human-Centered Engineering
• Enrollment & Degrees
• Graduates
• Faculty & Staff
• Alumni
• Donors
• Contracts & Grants
• Patents & Publications

Kolsky Bar Experiment For High-Rate Large Deformations Of Polycarbonate, Jason G. Vogeler

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Polycarbonate (PC) is a tough, transparent engineering thermoplastic. Its impact strength and ability undergo large plastic deformations without shatter make PC an ideal protective material for impact-resilient eyewear, aircraft windows and transparent armor. A good understanding of the response of this material to large deformations at high strain rates is critical for its utilization in these applications. To this end, a striker-less Kolsky bar device is employed in this work for the needed material characterization. The apparatus allow impulsive torsion and/or compression loadings with pulse durations sufficiently long for the plastic flow behavior to develop fully. Three new testing techniques …

Kolsky Bar Experiment For High-Rate Large Deformations Of Polycarbonate, Jason Gerald Vogeler

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Polycarbonate (PC) is a tough, transparent engineering thermoplastic. Its impact strength and ability undergo large plastic deformations without shatter make PC an ideal protective material for impact-resilient eyewear, aircraft windows and transparent armor. A good understanding of the response of this material to large deformations at high strain rates is critical for its utilization in these applications. To this end, a striker-less Kolsky bar device is employed in this work for the needed material characterization. The apparatus allow impulsive torsion and/or compression loadings with pulse durations sufficiently long for the plastic flow behavior to develop fully. Three new testing techniques …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, December 2013, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of The Effectiveness Of An Aid For The Development Of The Kinetic Skills Required For T.I.G. Welding, Maurice Collins, Robert Morris

Conference papers

This action research project was carried out in the Technological University Dublin, Ireland. The authors are both Lecturers of Engineering in this college and have a keen interest in providing the best possible aids to their students learning. Three groups of engineering apprentices and one group of part time students took part in this project. At the time these students were taking a third level Tungsten Inert Gas welding (T.I.G.) training module. Qualified T.I.G. welders are in very high demand worldwide and as such can demand a very high rate of pay for their services. The kinetic skills applicable to …