Digital Commons Network^™

Use Of Manifolds In The Insertion Of Ballistic Cycler Trajectories, Oliver K. Morrison

Master's Theses

Today, Mars is one of the most interesting and important destinations for humankind and copious methods have been proposed to accomplish these future missions. One of the more fascinating methods is the Earth-Mars cycler trajectory which is a trajectory that accomplishes repeat access to Earth and Mars with little to no fuel-burning maneuvers. This would allow fast travel to and from Mars, as well as grant the possibility of multiple missions using the same main vehicle.

Insertion from Earth-orbit onto the cycler trajectory has not been thoroughly ex- plored and the only existing method so far is a Hohmann-esque transfer …

Electrode Geometry Effects In An Electrothermal Plasma Microthruster, Harrison Raymond King

Master's Theses

Nanosatellites, such as Cubesats, are a rapidly growing sector of the space industry. Their popularity stems from their low development cost, short development cycle, and the widespread availability of COTS subsystems. Budget-conscious spacecraft designers are working to expand the range of missions that can be accomplished with nanosatellites, and a key area of development fueling this expansion is the creation of micropropulsion systems. One such system, originally developed at the Australian National University (ANU), is an electrothermal plasma thruster known as Pocket Rocket (PR). This device heats neutral propellant gas by exposing it to a Capacitively Coupled Plasma (CCP), then …

Effect Of Aquaponic Vs. Hydroponic Nutrient Solution, Led Light Intensity And Photoperiod On Indoor Plant Growth Of Butterhead, Romaine And Kale (L. Sativa, B. Oleracea), Sean M. Foster

Master's Theses

Vertical farming has been proposed as a solution for providing food security for an increasing, urbanized human population. Light-emitting diode (LED) technology has become increasingly affordable and efficient, making it an ideal choice as artificial lighting for indoor farms. Still largely undiscovered parameters are the optimal plant varieties and types of production systems for plant growth, profit, and human nutrition. Aquaponics may be able to provide sustainable animal protein for vertical farms, increasing their ability to provide more substantial nutrition to consumers. This research aimed to better understand vertical farming as a food production system, and to determine if aquaponics …

Railroad Safety Trail Alignment Study, Matthew Fluhmann

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

City Cottage Education Center, Connor Michael Flora, Alex Paris Remiticado

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Annuloplasty Mti: Improved Tooling For Annuloplasty Ring Manufacturing, Justin David Smith, Spencer Lee Combs, Luke Edward Maly

Mechanical Engineering

The complete senior project report was submitted to the project advisor and sponsor. The results of this project are of a confidential nature and will not be published at this time.

"Dual Peaks" Analog Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal, Dave Raul Breuer

Computer Engineering

The Dual Peaks distortion pedal is an analog effects pedal for electric guitar that distorts and boosts the guitar signal in order to achieve tonal characteristics often heard in music genres such as blues, rock, hard rock, and metal. Dual Peaks aims to remedy the current distortion pedal design, and provide a new spin not often provided in the majority of pedals. Dual Peaks contains two separate distortion channels which provide the player with a vast array of distortion and overdrive tones at the press of a switch. Also, Dual Peaks has a "noise gate" and 3-band equalizer circuits built …

The Effect Of Endgame Tablebases On Modern Chess Engines, Christopher D. Peterson

Computer Engineering

Modern chess engines have the ability to augment their evaluation by using massive tables containing billions of positions and their memorized solutions. This report examines the importance of these tables to better understand the circumstances under which they should be used. The analysis conducted in this paper empirically examines differences in size and speed of memorized positions and their impacts on engine strength. Using this technique, situations where memorized tables improve play (and situations where they do not) are discovered.

Senior Project - Roborodentia Robot, Nicholas Alexander Ilog

Computer Engineering

This project includes an autonomous robot capable of dispensing balls from a dispenser mounted on a wall and shooting the balls through targets five to eight feet away. The robot can hold up to five balls at a time and shoots balls one by one at targets.

Simulating The Electrical Properties Of Random Carbon Nanotube Networks Using A Simple Model Based On Percolation Theory, Roberto Abril Valenzuela

Physics

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been subject to extensive research towards their possible applications in the world of nanoelectronics. The interest in carbon nanotubes originates from their unique variety of properties useful in nanoelectronic devices. One key feature of carbon nanotubes is that the chiral angle at which they are rolled determines whether the tube is metallic or semiconducting. Of main interest to this project are devices containing a thin film of randomly arranged carbon nanotubes, known as carbon nanotube networks. The presence of semiconducting tubes in a CNT network can lead to a switching effect when the film is electro-statically …

Collision Avoidance Smartphone, Matt Columbres, Aaron Parisi, Joey Schnecker, Luis Wong

Electrical Engineering

There are many instances in day-to-day life where people cannot or would rather not pay full attention to their surroundings. Walking while preoccupied with a smartphone or walking while blind are excellent examples where technology could be used to make the task of avoiding 2collisions reactive, instead of proactive. A device which monitors a user’s surroundings and notifies the user when a potential collision is detected (and, additionally, notifying them as to where the obstacle is with respect to them) could be used to make walking distracted less of a hazard for the user and those around the user and …

Dc House Solar Panel Cleaner, Sarahanne Heredia, Sophia Deguia

Electrical Engineering

Solar panels lose 0.05% of their power conversion efficiency per day due to soil accumulation, according to an experiment conducted by the University of California, San Diego in 2013 [18]. The project is an electro-mechanical cleaning system that effectively and efficiently cleans solar panels at set intervals. A drip irrigation system with spray jets was attached to a water pump and Arduino, both powered by the DC House Project solar panel battery. The DC House solar panel was the targeted panel set up for the project. Several components of the design could have been chosen more optimally for the system; …

Circuit Breaker Module, Garvin Yee, Yei Trinh

Electrical Engineering

The circuit breaker module for this design project is a proof of concept that demonstrates the functionality, feasibility, and attainability of a consumer grade power systems analysis device suitable for college laboratory use. The goal of this project was to create the final iteration of a module that has been developed and refined over the course of previous years. The Cal Poly Electrical Engineering Department intends to use this design to produce circuit breaker modules intended for fault analysis. With the current changes made to the previous modules, the current circuit breaker is lighter, safer, and more universally reproducible. The …

Second Annual Survey On Narrowleaf Milkweed (Asclepias Fascicularis) And Western Monarch Butterfly (Danaus Plexippus) Populations In Pozo, Ca, Emily Rose Hermann, Francis Villablanca

Biological Sciences

The decline in milkweed (Asclepias spp.) populations across the country, due to factors including agricultural development and herbicide use, has lead to a correlated reduction of monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) feeding and breeding habitat. In addition, the intentional planting of non-native milkweed in areas surrounding overwintering habitat has altered Western monarch butterfly migratory behavior, by allowing monarchs to depart from their ancestral migration pattern (timing and location), therefore decreasing the effective population size, and putting monarchs at risk of higher pathogen prevalence, due, in part, to an obligate protozoan parasite that is able to persist on the …

Traducción Al Inglés De La Novela Aura Por Carlos Fuentes, Adrien Ziegler

World Languages and Cultures

This project is an English translation of the 1962 novel Aura, written by the Mexican novelist, Carlos Fuentes. Using many literary elements characteristic of magical realism and fantasy literature, Fuentes recounts the story of Felipe Montero, a young historian who accepts a very abnormal job while living in Mexico City during the 1960s. At the request of his new employer, the mysterious Señora Consuelo Llorente, Felipe is tasked (as a live-in assistant) to review, edit, and have published the memoirs of Consuelo’s late husband, General Llorente. While living in the Llorente household, Felipe meets Consuelo’s nice, Aura, and upon their …

Modular Injection System And Sampling Template (M.I.S.S.T) Design Report, Froylan M. Aguirre

Computer Engineering

Digital systems are ubiquitous throughout modern life and their applications continue to grow. Thus system designers engineer and test modular systems to mitigate error rates. Smaller systems and their increasing importance in many applications demand the utmost reliability. Fault injection is the most common method used by researchers and engineers to test system reliability. However, most hardware fault injection implementations are ad hoc and only used to test a specific system or for specific tests. There is also software-implemented fault injection that adds overhead in the benchmark source code. The aim of this project is to develop a general use, …

Smart Speaker Integration With Letshub, Michael Thanh Diep

Computer Engineering

Imagine you are a property manager, and you are currently renting your property to tenants. These tenants, who pay rent continuously for use of the property often leave the burden of upkeep to the property owner (or property manager). If the tenant were to run into an issue with their rental (such as a broken sink, replacement of a faucet, leaking of the roof, … etc.) they would have to coordinate with the property manager, who would then in turn have to manage the logistics of a service contractor and the tenants availability. Eventually, after logistic juggling from the tenant, …

Versatile Usb Powered Turntable, Kyle P. Mccarry

Electrical Engineering

People enjoy vinyl music’s warm sound, user participation, and nostalgic feel, but the large physical size and seemingly immobile system requirements prevent vinyl turntables branching into digital music dominated realms. USB ports power many important everyday devices. A USB powered turntable increases record player adaptability, versatility, and portability thus expanding usable turntable scenarios. The manual turntable plays seven to twelve-inch vinyl at 33 1/3 or 45 rpm. It includes a stylus, magnetic phono cartridge, tonearm, 45-rpm adapter, motor, audio output, and several setting switches and knob for easy use.

Analysis Of Improved Multiphase Buck Converter, Usamah Riaz Ahmad, Scott Wu

Electrical Engineering

While the number of transistors per microprocessor is rapidly increasing, the power requirements of converters are getting more and more important. The amount of current is increasing, while at the same time the output voltage is steadily decreasing. Today’s boards are exceeding 100A, while the buck converters have their output voltage below 1 V. Due to these new power requirements, multiphase buck converters are becoming more popular. In addition, this topology is usually used with voltage regulator modules (VRM).

The TPS40090EVM-002 board was used as the original multiphase buck with an input voltage of 12 V and output voltage of …

Investigating Efficiency Of Ac Direct Drive Of Led Lighting, Miles Davis Head

Electrical Engineering

This project explores the rapidly-expanding area of AC direct drive for LED lighting. AC LED driving does not use typical DC-DC converter-based driving but uses semiconductor switches and a linear regulator to activate a number of LEDs proportional to the input voltage at any given time. This allows bulky, expensive magnetics to be eliminated from the system. The goal of this project was to develop a flexible simulation of a common AC LED system to find areas of significant power loss and attempt to improve them. This allows future versions of an AC LED system to start with major loss …

Ewall Inverter Project, Andrew Douglas Tsau, Alex Lopez

Electrical Engineering

The objective of this project is to demonstrate the capabilities of a Raspberry Pi when used as a grid-tied, bi-directional power inverter for renewable energy storage applications. Due to its economical nature, this system would play a large role in the growing solar industry by making solar energy more accessible, affordable, and easier to install. The inverter uses a single-phase H-Bridge to generate a sine wave from a proprietary wall mounted battery. To improve power quality, an enhanced low pass filter is added to provide a better drop off to reduce extraneous harmonics. The system synchronizes this synthetic sine wave …

Design And Test Of Wide Input And Output Constant Current Led Driver, Kean Wee

Electrical Engineering

This senior project aims to provide design and test the performance of a DC-DC constant current LED driver for use in a larger DC smart building infrastructure. In this instance, a SEPIC topology is chosen to provide high efficiency output current at output voltages that can be above or below the input voltage. This is challenging since the same design must operate at similar efficiency for vastly different environmental conditions. As a part of a larger system, the design must be able to perform the given task consistently regardless of changes to the source and load power.

The design uses …

Digital Guitar Effects Pedal, Ian Charles Lang

Electrical Engineering

The Digital Guitar Effects Pedal assists guitarists in creating music by implementing several useful functions. The pedal takes an analog input signal from an electric guitar, performs digital operations on it, and outputs a modified analog signal to an external guitar amplifier. Pedal functions include: an easy-to-use instrument tuner, a looper which records and plays back music segments, a tap tempo mode allowing easy synchronization with other instruments, and various guitar effects (distortion, echo, and vibrato, among other examples). The pedal user interface displays the current selected function, and allows easy switching between effects.

Jasmint: Language To User-Friendly Ast With Emphasis On Translation, John E. Bradbury

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The goal of this project was to create a language (JASMINT) which would be easily transformable into other languages. With this, a library could be built which provides a rich set of functions, including typechecking, interpreting, and serialization, in order to make user modules easy to write. These modules are able to translate this AST into other languages and through the translation blocks can add new functionalities to JASMINT. The final state of the project at submission includes a library which handles all features except dynamic memory, transpilers (JasmintCxxTranspiler and JasmintPythonTranspiler) which handle most features except classes and dynamic memory, …

Chrome Extension To Explore Modular Homepage, Griffin T. Cloonan, Landon E. Woollard, Nick A. Ponce

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This was an exploratory project, intended to develop skills developing extension based web applications. We spent our time building a modular, customizable homepage extension for google chrome. The bulk of our work was focused towards structure and function, as a result, the project is not highly appealing visually. We worked with foreign concepts in a foreign environment in an attempt to learn new skills on the fly.

Forumsphere.Com, Nicholas Scott Gatehouse, Sam Robert Rastovich

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We live in the Age of Information & Technology where social media has become an integral part of our society. Social media platforms such as Facebook help bring people and ideas together in one place. However, currently there is no centralized hub on the internet that is geared towards individual college campuses. Our goal is to create an environment that promotes structured and productive discussion between students, alumni, and staff. A platform like ours is needed to bring a campus closer if the community is willing and able to help one another.

There are other platforms that focus on social …

Roborodentia Robot: Treadbot, Stephen C. Schmidt

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This document is a summary of my contest entry to the 2018 Cal Poly Roborodentia competition. It is meant to be a process overview and design outline of the mechanical, electrical, and software components of my robot.

Dynamic Routing And Network Monitoring For The Polywog Protocol, Ryan Lawrence, Josh Pfeffer

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This document analyzes the implementation of dynamic routing for router nodes in a mesh network. It examines the algorithm used to populate both the minimum-distance and the routing tables. Furthermore, it describes the node configurations used for testing and applications for mesh networks.

Additionally, this document describes the implementation and testing of network monitoring in a mesh network. It discusses the steps used to forward active nodes in the network between router nodes, a gateway node, and a network monitor.

Lastly, this paper details our future plans for implementing additional features for a network monitor.

Extension Of Cpe 454 Operating System, Joseph Nathaniel Arhar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This project extended on the operating system I wrote in CPE 454 by adding additional features on top of the existing implementation. In order to implement them, I researched operating system design patterns and hardware details. I used wiki.osdev.org for most research, just like I did in CPE 454. The source code for the project is at https://github.com/josepharhar/jos.

Tectonic Controls On Alluvial Fan Dissection In The El Paso Mountains, Michael Thomas Gaffney

Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences

The localized dissection of alluvial fans along the western El Paso Mountains is under question. A relatively minor, south dipping normal fault, previously unmentioned in scientific literature, cuts across Quaternary terraces and alluvial fans in the piedmont of the El Paso Mountains. The linear trend of footwall uplift and the pattern of stream incision into the footwall adjacent to the linear trend of footwall uplift reveal that fan dissection is a result of base level fall caused by ongoing tectonism along the El Paso fault system. The regional importance is discussed as the timing of faulting reveals relatively recent uplift …