Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Adaptive Control Applied To The Cal Poly Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics Simulator, Matthew C. Downs

Master's Theses

The goal of this thesis is to use the Cal Poly Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics Simulator to provide proof of concept of two adaptive control theories developed by former Cal Poly students: Nonlinear Direct Model Reference Adaptive Control and Adaptive Output Feedback Control. The Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics Simulator is a student-built air bearing spacecraft simulator controlled by four reaction wheels in a pyramidal arrangement. Tests were performed to determine the effectiveness of the two adaptive control theories under nominal operating conditions, a “plug-and-play” spacecraft scenario, and under simulated actuator damage. Proof of concept of the adaptive control theories applied to attitude …

An Investigation Of Humeral Stress Fractures In Racing Thoroughbreds Using A 3d Finite Element Model In Conjunction With A Bone Remodeling Algorithm, Ryan James Moore

Master's Theses

The humerus of a racing horse Thoroughbred is highly susceptible to stress fractures at a characteristic location as a result of cyclic loading. The propensity of a Thoroughbred to exhibit humeral fracture has made equines useful models in the epidemiology of stress fractures. In this study, a racing Thoroughbred humerus was simulated during training using a 3D finite element model in conjunction with a bone remodeling algorithm. Nine muscle forces and two contact forces were applied to the 3-dimensional finite element model, which contains four separate load cases representing fore-stance, mid-stance, aft-stance, and standing. Four different training programs were incorporated …

Optimal Synthesis Of Planar Adjustable Mechanisms, Chong Peng

Dissertations

Adjustable mechanisms provide degrees of flexibility while retaining desirable features of one degree of freedom close-loop mechanisms, such as simplicity, stability, and high speed capabilities. By adjusting linkage parameters, additional phases of motions can be achieved using the same hardware. However, an adjustment to the mechanism adds only one or two additional design positions and divides desired positions into "phases", each of which contains only a few positions usually insufficient for industrial applications.

In order to extend the design position limitation of adjustable mechanisms, an optimal synthesis method based on link length structural error is developed and applied to kinematic …

Motion Coordination And Control In The Development Of A Gait Rehabilitation System, Yazan Ahmad Manna

Dissertations

While most take their ability to walk for granted, some are unable to walk due to any number of pathologies, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), spinal cord injury (SCI), and Parkinson's disease. Decreased activity has been shown to be associated with rapidly deconditioning. Rehabilitation techniques that afford patients the ability to begin reconditioning through walking sooner may ultimately enhance their return to a better quality of life. To assist the functional recovery of such patients, an appropriate afferent input to the spinal cord will help in the therapy of the patient. Manual training is labor intensive, costly, and ergonomically …

Modeling The Combined Effect Of Surface Roughness And Shear Rate On Slip Flow Of Simple Fluids, Nikolai V. Priezjev, Anoosheh Niavarani

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Molecular dynamics (MD) and continuum simulations are carried out to investigate the influence of shear rate and surface roughness on slip flow of a Newtonian fluid. For weak wall-fluid interaction energy, the nonlinear shear-rate dependence of the intrinsic slip length in the flow over an atomically flat surface is computed by MD simulations. We describe laminar flow away from a curved boundary by means of the effective slip length defined with respect to the mean height of the surface roughness. Both the magnitude of the effective slip length and the slope of its rate-dependence are significantly reduced in the presence …

Simulation And Thermodynamic Analysis Of Extended Expansion On A Concept Rotary Engine Including Its Effects On Fuel Efficiency, Denis Allemant Andre, Matthew James Jensen, Gerald Micklow, James Brenner, Helgevon Helldorff

Mechanical and Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper describes a novel method for extended expansion in a rotary combustion engine running ordinary gasoline. The engine consists of a toroidal-shaped piston that rotates around a drum to expand and evacuate the hot gas. There are several problems with today’s internal combustion (IC) engines. Current IC engines do not always have the necessary internal volume to extract the maximum work possible, and since the whole process of compression, combustion, and expansion happen within the same space, excess heat builds up and increases emissions of nitric oxides and nitrogen dioxide. The proposed solution is to redesign the IC engine …

Constitutive Response And Mechanical Properties Of Pfsa Membranes In Liquid Water, Ahmet Kusoglu, Yaliang Tang, Melissa Lugo, Anette M. Karlsson, Michael H. Santare, Simon Cleghorn, William B. Johnson

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The mechanical properties and swelling behavior of perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) membranes in liquid water have been investigated using a custom-built, temperature-controlled water bath. Interestingly, the theoretical models of Mooney-Rivlin and Ogden for rubber elasticity are shown to reproduce the major features of the experimentally obtained stress-strain relationships. In addition, stress relaxation of the membrane subjected to a fixed strain at room temperature fits time-dependent constitutive models used to describe nonlinear rubber elasticity. Thus, the experimental results suggest that even though PFSA is not an elastomer, the constitutive models developed for rubber-like behavior can be used for describing the ex situ …

Recovery Of Rectified Signals From Hot-Wire/Film Anemometers Due To Flow Reversal In Oscillating Flows, Yingchen Yang, Douglas L. Jones, Chang Liu

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Hot-wire/film anemometers have been broadly used in experimental studies in fluid mechanics, acoustics, and ocean engineering. Yet, it is well known that hot-wire/film anemometers rectify the signal outputs due to the lack of sensitivity to flow direction. This main drawback, in turn, makes them less useful for diverse fluctuating flow measurements. To solve this issue, a rectification recovery method has been developed based on reconstruction of the Fourier series expansion in conjunction with signal-squaring approach. This signal recovery method was experimentally examined and proven to be successful for both conventional and microfabricated hot-wire/film anemometers. The method was further applied to …

Updated Miscellaneous Electricity Loads And Appliance Energy Usage Profiles For Use In Home Energy Ratings, The Building America Benchmark And Related Calculations [Revised], Florida Solar Energy Center, Danny Parker

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report addresses the ever increasing percentage of whole house energy use that is attributable to miscellaneous electricity loads (MELs) and major appliances. It builds on earlier U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reports on the same subject and incorporates the 2005 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) public use data set to determine how major appliance use is related to the number of bedrooms in existing homes. These data, coupled with existing and proposed DOE appliance testing and labeling standards, are then used to determine a set of baseline lighting and appliance energy end use values for use in the HERS …

Smooth-Wall Boundary Conditions For Dissipation-Based Turbulence Models, W. F. Phillips, Doug F. Hunsaker, Robert E. Spall

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

It is shown that the smooth-wall boundary conditions specified for commonly used dissipation-based turbulence models are mathematically incorrect. It is demonstrated that when these traditional wall boundary conditions are used, the resulting formulations allow an infinite number of solutions. Furthermore, these solutions do not enforce energy conservation and they do not properly enforce the no-slip condition at a smooth surface. This is true for all dissipation-based turbulence models, including the k-ε, k-ω, and k-ζ models. Physically correct wall boundary conditions must force both k and its gradient to zero at a smooth wall. Enforcing these two boundary conditions on k …

Bennett Clocking Of Nanomagnetic Logic Using Multiferroic Single-Domain Nanomagnets, Jayasimha Atulasimha, Supriyo Bandyopadhyay

Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Publications

The authors show that it is possible to rotate the magnetization of a multiferroic (strain-coupled two-layer magnetostrictive-piezoelectric)nanomagnet by a large angle with a small electrostatic potential. This can implement Bennett clocking [Int. J. Theor. Phys.21, 905 (1982)] in nanomagnetic logic arrays resulting in unidirectional propagation of logic bits from one stage to another. This method is potentially more energy efficient than using spin-transfer torque for magnetization rotation. For realistic parameters, it is shown that a potential of ∼0.2 V applied to a multiferroicnanomagnet can rotate magnetization by nearly 90° to implement Bennett clocking.

Static And Dynamic Contact Angle Measurement On Rough Surfaces Using Sessile Drop Profile Analysis With Application To Water Management In Low Temperature Fuel Cells, Vinaykumar Konduru

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Fuel Cells are a promising alternative energy technology. One of the biggest problems that exists in fuel cell is that of water management. A better understanding of wettability characteristics in the fuel cells is needed to alleviate the problem of water management. Contact angle data on gas diffusion layers (GDL) of the fuel cells can be used to characterize the wettability of GDL in fuel cells. A contact angle measurement program has been developed to measure the contact angle of sessile drops from drop images. Digitization of drop images induces pixel errors in the contact angle measurement process. The resulting …

Vibro-Acoustical Analysis And Design Of A Multiple-Layer Constrained Viscoelastic Damping Structure, Fei Lin

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

The goal of this research is to provide a framework for vibro-acoustical analysis and design of a multiple-layer constrained damping structure. The existing research on damping and viscoelastic damping mechanism is limited to the following four mainstream approaches: modeling techniques of damping treatments/materials; control through the electrical-mechanical effect using the piezoelectric layer; optimization by adjusting the parameters of the structure to meet the design requirements; and identification of the damping material’s properties through the response of the structure. This research proposes a systematic design methodology for the multiple-layer constrained damping beam giving consideration to vibro-acoustics.

A modeling technique to study …

An Mpi-Cuda Implementation For Massively Parallel Incompressible Flow Computations On Multi-Gpu Clusters, Dana A. Jacobsen, Julien C. Thibault, Inanc Senocak

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Modern graphics processing units (GPUs) with many-core architectures have emerged as general-purpose parallel computing platforms that can accelerate simulation science applications tremendously. While multi-GPU workstations with several TeraFLOPS of peak computing power are available to accelerate computational problems, larger problems require even more resources. Conventional clusters of central processing units (CPU) are now being augmented with multiple GPUs in each compute-node to tackle large problems. The heterogeneous architecture of a multi-GPU cluster with a deep memory hierarchy creates unique challenges in developing scalable and efficient simulation codes. In this study, we pursue mixed MPI-CUDA implementations and investigate three strategies to …

Value Stream Mapping Of Information Flow In Infrastructure Projects, Venkata Ramana Ramana Ari

ETD Archive

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a tool for depicting the flow of material in a manufacturing process. This study demonstrates that value stream mapping can also be applied to the movement and processing of information in a non-manufacturing environment. Here, the handling of, and changes to, water project construction plans within the Cleveland Division of Water (DOW) are tracked using value stream mapping. The map identifies opportunities for the Division of Water to streamline its processes and ensure that accurate information about project construction reaches its primary database in a timely fashion. Currently it takes about 19.1 weeks from the …

Process Design For Aeration Of Facial Prosthetic, Nathaniel J. Urciuoli

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Facial prosthetics are becoming a necessary step for the recovery of injured veterans and civilians who have suffered severe facial burning. Current users of such prosthetics are not able to wear the prosthetic for an extended period of time due to uncomfortable conditions created by the silicone material. A solution for this problem was to develop a process for creating small holes similar to skin pores that will both ventilate and aid in the evaporation of accumulated sweat under the prosthetic.

The main steps of this process were to create a flexible fixture capable of supporting and securing the prosthetic …

Funboe (Follow-Up Nucleate Boiling On-Flight Experiment), Getaway Special Team 2010

Education and Outreach

No abstract provided.

Gravitational Effects On Thin-Wire Subcooled Nucleate Boiling Dynamics, Justin Koeln, Andrew Fassmann, Troy Munro, Rob Barnett

Education and Outreach

No abstract provided.

Gravitational Effects On Thin-Wire Subcooled Nucleate Boiling Dynamics, Justin Koeln, Andrew Fassmann, Troy Munro, Rob Barnett

Presentations

No abstract provided.

In Search Of Something More: My Path Towards International Service-Learning In Engineering Education, Margaret Pinnell

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

My personal and professional travels led me toward global education, in particular the University of Dayton (UD) program Engineers in Technical Humanitarian Opportunities for Service-Learning (ETHOS). I do not believe I ever intended to become part of an international engineering education program. In fact, I think the international piece was just a bonus. What really drew me to the ETHOS program was what initially draws our students to the program - a desire to "help" people. In order for the reader to understand how I ended up being involved in global education through the ETHOS program, I must first explain …