Manufacturing Commons^™

Layer-Wise Printing Parameter Optimization For Laser Powder Bed Fusion, Chaoran Dou, Rongxuan Wang, Raghav Gnanasambandam, Jianzhi Li, Zhenyu James Kong

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a transformative technology that enables the fabrication of complex geometries layer by layer. However, metal parts produced via AM processes such as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) are prone to various defects, including porosity and deformation. These defects often result from suboptimal printing parameter settings. Traditional approaches typically aim to reduce defects by optimizing a fixed set of parameters for the entire part. However, such methods do not account for layer-wise variations in printing conditions caused by changes in geometry, heat transfer, and re-heating effects. While optimizing parameters for each layer could improve part quality, it …

Reinforcement Learning For Imbalanced Data In Robotic Anomaly Detection Within Autonomous Manufacturing, Salma Messaoudi, Ahmed Bendaouia, El Hassan Abdelwahed, Mohammed Ameksa, Hajar Mousannif, Jianzhi Li

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Ensuring reliable anomaly detection in industrial robots is critical for safe and autonomous manufacturing operations. However, it remains challenging due to temporal dependencies and class imbalance in sensor data. This study presents a reinforcement learning approach using Deep Q-Network (DQN) enhanced with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM) for robust anomaly detection in robotic systems. The proposed framework integrates an LSTM into the DQN policy to capture temporal patterns. It also introduces a novel GBM-based reward mechanism that mitigates class imbalance by applying SMOTE (Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique) after removing temporal dependencies. Experimental results demonstrate that this …

Thermal Management And Lubrication Characteristics Of Tungsten Disulfide (Ws2) Vegetable-Based Nanolubricants, Jaime Taha-Tijerina, Dyana De Leon-Elizondo, Jade Mendieta, Leonardo Taha-Soto

Informatics and Engineering Systems Faculty Publications

Recent innovations with the aid of nanotechnology are more frequently seen in the industrial sectors. Lubricants are a high-end commodity resource used in many manufacturing processes; unfortunately, most of these lubricants are petroleum-based, which come with certain drawbacks, such as environmental aspects, handling issues and high costs. With the incorporation of nanostructures within fluids and lubricants, novel material alternatives are replacing conventional lubrication systems, maintaining the required thermophysical and tribological characteristics. This research provides an analysis of vegetable lubricant, castor oil (CO), and the effects of the incorporation of WS2 nanofiller at diverse filler fractions. A TEMPOS thermal analyzer device …

Bonderson Workbench, Han Xu, Aidan Robleto, Sean Murphy, Victor Duran

Mechanical Engineering

This project redesigns the existing creative workbenches in Cal Poly's Bonderson High Bay to improve mobility and functionality for students and staff in the Mechanical Engineering Department.

Fsae Bespoke Brake Calipers For Hub Motor Architecture, Connor William Vaughan, Liam Upton Walsh, Bradley Brian Kern

Mechanical Engineering

Brakes are the most critical safety system on any performance vehicle, and as Cal Poly Racing transitions their Formula SAE car from a single rear motor to a four-in-wheel motor setup with regenerative braking, the team identified an opportunity to develop a bespoke brake caliper tailored to their specific needs. This document outlines the research, design, manufacturing, and validation of custom front brake calipers designed to improve upon commercial motorcycle calipers in key areas such as serviceability, mounting rigidity, thermal behavior, mass, and hub motor integration. The resulting design is a two-piece, four-piston, radially-mounted aluminum caliper featuring titanium pistons, toolless …

Cvj Torque Loss Dynamometer, Malaika Sriram, Coleman Brown, Zachary Norris, Logan Mast, Chris Mattis

Mechanical Engineering

This report details the design and results of a dynamometer testing rig built to measure torque losses in constant velocity joints (CVJs) for Cal Poly Racing's Baja SAE team. The rig spins a flywheel connected to articulable CVJs up to 800 RPM using a motor, then decouples it and measures the spin-down rate from 800 to 100 RPM to calculate angular acceleration and torque loss. The data collected from this dyno will be used to inform freewheel packaging for future Baja car development.

Design And Development Of A 12-Degree-Of-Freedom Quadruped Robot, Kai De La Cruz

Master's Theses

This thesis presents the design, analysis, and experimental validation of a 12-degree-of-freedom (DOF) quadruped robot developed as a research platform for legged locomotion and control. The system builds upon the Cal Poly Legged Robotics Group’s prior 8-DOF quadruped, addressing key limitations in manipulability, load distribution, and mechanical robustness by introducing a 3-DOF leg architecture.

The mechanical design emphasizes lightweight construction, structural integrity, and modularity to support future research extensions. Static and dynamic loading models were developed to inform component sizing and material selection. A carbon-fiber chassis and redesigned leg assemblies were fabricated and validated through finite element analysis and physical …

Enhancement Of Plastic Deformation In Ultrasound-Assisted Cold Spray Of Tungsten: A Molecular Dynamics Study, Md Tusher Ahmed, Farid Ahmed, Jianzhi Li

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Tungsten (W) is widely valued for its exceptional thermal stability, mechanical strength, and corrosion resistance, making it an ideal candidate for high-performance military and aerospace applications. However, its high melting point and limited room-temperature plasticity pose significant challenges for processing W using additive manufacturing (AM). Cold spray (CS), a solid-state AM process that relies on high-velocity particle impact and plastic deformation, offers a promising route for additive manufacturing of W, yet conventional CS fails to induce sufficient plastic deformation for effective bonding. In this study, we employ atomistic simulations to investigate the effect of ultrasonic perturbation in …

An Autonomous Robotic System For Object Retrieval And Delivery: Enhancing Independence For Users Living With Disability And Older Adults, Jincheng Li, Chenghao Lin, Amna Mazen, Youssef A. Bazzi

Michigan Tech Publications

As the global population ages, there is a growing need for assistive technologies to help older adults maintain their independence. This work presents a cost-effective autonomous socially assistive robot designed for object retrieval and delivery, enhancing accessibility in home environments. The system is built on the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework and integrates three key components: the Pioneer P3-DX mobile robot for autonomous navigation, the ReactorX-200 robotic arm for pick-and-place operations, and the Kinect v2 RGB-D camera for object detection and localization. Users interact with the robot through natural language processing by issuing voice commands to retrieve various objects. Microsoft …

Artificial Intelligence And Additive Manufacturing As A Coupled Design System: Rethinking Inference, Manufacturability, And Design Education, Charul Chadha, Garth Crosby, Sabit Ekin, Mohamed Gharib, Eman Hammad, Congrui Jin, Ali Ahmad Malik, Noemi Mendoza Diaz, Calahan Mollan, Monsuru Ramoni

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming deeply integrated into additive manufacturing (AM) workflows, reshaping how designers approach geometry, materials, and process constraints. AI holds significant potential by accelerating design exploration, revealing complex patterns in AM behavior, and supporting earlier assessment of manufacturability. At the same time, it introduces new risks related to model transparency, data quality, physical validity, and the potential for overreliance by students and practitioners. This perspective examines these issues through four guiding questions that address the role of AI in AM-enabled design, the gaps that limit or enable AI contribution, the implications for engineering education, and the responsibilities …

Reinforced Scan: A Reinforcement Learning Enabled Optimal Laser Scan Path Planning In Laser Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing, Chaoran Dou, Jihoon Chung, Raghav Gnanasambandam, Yuhao Wu, Jianzhi Li, Zhenyu James Kong

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Additive Manufacturing is an innovative technology that fabricates parts layer by layer. However, in Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF), printed metal parts often exhibit residual stresses, deformations, and other defects due to non-uniform temperature distribution during the printing process. To mitigate these issues, an optimized scan sequence within each layer can improve thermal uniformity. Traditional optimization methods, which rely on domain knowledge and employ trial-and-error or heuristic approaches, often fail to achieve optimal solutions due to the complex nature of the problem. One major challenge in improving scan strategies lies in the vast search space required to optimize the scan …

Harnessing Ml And Iiot For Traceability In Continuous Production Systems: A Conceptual Framework, Kholoud M. Abdelaal

Theses and Dissertations

In the era of rapid technological advancement, the manufacturing sector faces increasing pressure to leverage emerging technologies to enhance operational efficiency and minimize waste. In this context, traceability plays a pivotal role, as it provides complete visibility of processes and products throughout manufacturing systems, enabling them to identify areas for improvement and take corrective actions accordingly. Additionally, traceability ensures compliance, supports product recalls, provides a clear understanding of the system’s performance, and enables fact-driven decision-making in multiple aspects of the manufacturing system. Although the broad spectrum of traceability applications in batch production-based plants, traceability remains challenging to achieve in continuous …

Detecting And Repairing Conflicting Constraints In Co-Trained Physics-Informed Neural Networks For Composite Curing Processes, Cooper J. Evans

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Composite materials have become a critical component of modern manufacturing, especially in the automotive and aerospace industries. The curing process for these composites has been modeled using a variety of partial differential equations representing the heat transfer and composite curing kinetics. Optimizing the applied temperature profile is critical for maximizing the efficiency and capacity of composite part manufacturers. Constraints must be placed on the inputs and outputs of the model, including but not limited to, the applied temperature profile, part temperature, and final degree of cure. Conflicting sets of constraints are easy to unknowingly impose due to the highly coupled …

Vibration-Based Fault Diagnosis In Industrial Rotating Machinery, Yaman Pandey

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Unplanned downtime caused by rotating machines results in a significant percentage of the total downtime in manufacturing plants. These downtimes cause significant loss of production time. While preventative maintenance helps minimize lot of these downtimes, it can’t predict the upcoming downtimes and prevent them from occurring. That gave birth to predictive maintenance. While various techniques are used for predictive maintenance, vibration analysis is one of them. In this study, data driven and expert validated diagnosis using vibration analysis for rotary machinery is used. The data is collected from a manufacturing site in Minnesota where 32 rotating assets, including motors and …

Design For Extrusion-Based Additive Manufacturing: Generation Of Guidelines For Ceramics With Comparison To Thermoplastics, Hollis Hervey Waites

Masters Theses

"Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) has made much progress for polymer material extrusion processes (MEX-P), like Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), but very little progress for ceramic MEX processes (MEX-C) like Direct Ink Writing (DIW). This thesis leverages MEX-P design guidelines to create an initial set of design guidelines for DIW. FDM and DIW processes and material properties are compared, and the effect of these factors on the differences in rules is discussed. Five design guidelines are identified as applying to all MEX. For three of these, an exact limit for DIW of alumina is studied: minimum corner radius in the …

Castrip Process Technology: Non-Grain Oriented (Ngo) Si Steels Extension And Carbide-Free Bainitic (Cfb) For Flat Products, Naram Naidu Meesala

Masters Theses

"This research explores the development of advanced steel grades manufactured through Castrip® twin-roll thin strip casting technology, with particular attention to non-grain-oriented electrical Si-Steels (NGOES) and carbide-free bainitic (CFB) steels. The Castrip® process offers a near-net-shape route for producing thin steel strips, which greatly decreases the number of processing stages, lowers energy demand, and reduces carbon dioxide emissions when compared with traditional steel production methods.

In the NGOES part of the study, several industrial Fe–Si steel compositions were cold rolled to final thicknesses ranging from 0.35 mm to 0.15 mm. These materials were then exposed to short-duration continuous annealing at …

Critical Parameters Controlling Oxide Scale Formation And Hydro-Descaling Efficiency During Steelmaking, Tochukwu Princewill Ojiako

Doctoral Dissertations

In modern steelmaking, cast slabs are exposed to high-temperature oxidizing environments during secondary cooling, reheating, and hot rolling, resulting in the formation of multilayer oxide scales on the steel surface. These scales interact with mold-flux residues originating from the casting process (CC). The morphology, chemistry, and adhesion of oxide scale strongly influence its removability during high-pressure hydraulic descaling and ultimately determine the surface quality of hot-rolled products. However, the mechanistic relationship between oxide scale evolution, scale-steel interfacial structure, and hydraulic descaling performance remains poorly understood.

This dissertation investigates oxide scale formation, modification, and removal in low-carbon thin-slab steels produced by …

Field-Assisted Post-Processing Of Cold-Sprayed Pure Copper, Alan Hensley

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The properties of materials processed through cold spray, and many other AM processes, are non-uniform and unpredictable. In most cases, post-processing is required to achieve desired properties and better uniformity. In cold spray, the typical method is an annealing heat treatment (AHT), which can improve bond strength, reduce porosity, and restore ductility, among other effects. AHT alone, however, is unable to completely remedy any of the unfavorable properties. In addition, long treatments at high temperatures are often needed for satisfactory results. This increases energy consumption and extends production times for products made by the process. For these reasons, numerous investigations …

Process-Guided Learning Via Data-Driven Modeling And Controller Synthesis, Benton Clark

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

This work introduces process-guided learning, a framework in which process characteristics and learning algorithms are combined in the modeling process of engineering applications with the aim of uniting traditional and data-driven modeling and control techniques. Traditional engineering methods using simplified analytic models fail to capture the increasing complexities of engineering problems with sufficient accuracy to achieve modern requirements. More advanced modeling and control techniques using high-fidelity models often produce a computational burden that is infeasible for real-time solutions. Data-driven modeling offers a simple and flexible algorithm for producing real-time capable, high-fidelity models, but naive implementations lack the physical constraints of …

A Full Polymer Piezoelectric Flextensional Energy Harvester, Nadia Ahbab, Sidra Naz, Bingqi Zhao, Tian-Bing Xu

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This study presents a full polymer piezoelectric flextensional energy harvester (FPPFEH) comprising a single-layer poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) film bonded to a 3D-printed polylactic acid (PLA) flextensional frame. For an arm inclination angle of θ=10°, the free-body model gives a theoretical geometric force-amplification factor of M_F=cot θ ≈ 5.67; this value represents an ideal upper bound and was not independently validated by local force or strain measurements. During assembly, the film was tensioned only to remove visible slack and maintain a flat configuration. No intentional pretension was applied, and any residual tension was not measured. Off-resonance force-controlled tests showed …