Engineering Commons^™

Economic Returns To Clean Water: Evidence From Us Historical Records., Joseph Price

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this project was to use linked census records to evaluate the long-run effects of access to clean water. By linking individuals across census years we can specifically determine where they lived during their childhood and also have information about their educational attainment and earnings later in life (using the 1940 census). The project was designed to use a time period when the US was a developing country and beginning to use chlorination to clean its water to assess the economic returns to clean water.

Rebuilding Kidneys, Alonzo D. Cook, Deverly L. Roeder, Jonathan J. Wisco

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The motivation for this work was the tremendous need for replacement kidneys. End-stage renal disease (ESRD) affects over 500,000 patients in the U.S. and costs Medicare $30 Billion annually for dialysis and transplant procedures. Our overall objective was to engineer kidneys from decellularized porcine extracellular matrix (DPECM) scaffolds and cell cultures grown from human progenitor cells. The primary reason for using human cells was to develop non-immunogenic kidneys that can be used to treat the more than 100,000 chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients awaiting a transplant, thus obviating the need for post-transplant immunosuppressive therapy and the associated risks of acute …

Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Wake Model Development, Andrew Ning

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The objective of this research was to develop an aerodynamic wake model for a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT), and to better understand vertical axis wind turbine performance. We were successful in developing a wake model. Additional work went in to understand trade-offs in power performance with acoustic constraints. The results were two conference papers, two journal papers, and open-source data and code. Additional work in ongoing to extended the wake mode’s usefulness for wake interactions and closely-spaced turbines.

A Handy Underwater Solution, Benjamin Murdoch, Matt Ricks, Ales Ball, Jacob Olson, Ethan Durrant, Connor Monson, Lars Watts, Mark Killpack

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Hod Lipson once asked an audience at TED, “Where are the robots?” We’ve been waiting for them a long time now and modern robotics still hasn’t caught up with our hopes and dreams. Through our research we hope to address one of the major topics in robotics: movement (or kinematics), and use this moment of exploration to build a new low cost robotic hand capable of use within the exciting realm of aquatics.

Autonomous Identification And Classification Of Targets Using An Unmanned Aerial System, Taylor Mcdonnell, Tim Mclain

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Commercial applications of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are expected to grow significantly in the coming years [1]. Applications of unmanned aerial vehicles in the commercial market include agricultural and infrastructure monitoring, aerial photography, package delivery, fire monitoring, wildlife tracking, and search and rescue operations. One of the purposes of the AUVSI-SUAS competition is to train undergraduates for the growing UAS industry. In this competition a team’s UAS must autonomously identify and locate several targets, which are geometric shapes with a given shape, shape color, letter, letter color, geolocation, and orientation. The focus of this project is to develop the image …

Large Body Influence In Internal Wave Generation, Austin Maxwell, Julie Crockett

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Internal waves are three dimensional waves that propagate within a stratified fluid. They are able to propagate in all directions within our atmosphere and the oceans which are both stratified fluids of continuously changing densities. Internal waves are much larger than surface waves, having wavelengths of hundreds of kilometers and amplitudes more than a kilometer in height. Due to their large size they can be difficult to study in nature, and there is still much to be learned about these waves and their impact on the environment. My research has focused on the generation of internal waves by the motion …

Crispr-Cas9 Directed Pdgf-Β Transcriptional Activation In Fibroblast Cell, Lia Gale, Brian Jensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Chronic wounds, particularly in the lower limb, represent a huge physical, financial, and social burden to 50 million people worldwide. In 2014, Americans paid an estimated $25 billion for simple wound care for patients. Despite these efforts, traditional methods of trying to heal wounds from the outside via surgical debridement, anti-inflammatory medications, moisture correction, etc. often fail to close wounds (Demidova-Rice et al., 2012). If wound closure does not occur, infection will cause localized tissue death and can lead to sepsis and death. Unfortunately, this leaves amputation as the only resort when wounds don’t close. If primary amputation occurs, …

Triggering The Solar Revolution, Justin Halversen, John Salmon

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The sun’s energy emissions are significantly higher than other alternative energy sources. All other energy sources combined would not provide even one percent of the potential collectible energy from the sun. The amount of potential solar power available is well over 5000 times the current world consumption. Indeed, there is a very large and renewable reservoir of untapped potential solar energy which could be made more directly available to more people.

Origami: Numerical Solutions Of Apparent Absorptivity In Origami Folds, Michael Farnsworth, Brian Iverson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

There are three major types of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. In many cases, radiation is ignored due to the fact that the amount of heat transferred by this method tend to be small compared to conduction and convection. However, in space and in some settings on earth, radiation is dominant and important. Absorptivity is a measure of an object’s ability to absorb radiation, and apparent absorptivity is a measure of how the shape of an object affects the amount of radiation that it absorbs. For example, if you were to shine a flashlight on a mirror, the light …

Design And Comparison Of Variable-Stiffness Compliant Joints For Haptic Devices, David Usevitch, Mark Colton

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Haptic interfaces or devices are computercontrolled robotic systems that seek to replicate the touch experience of a human user¹. The purpose of this research is to develop a viable variable-stiffness compliant joint for haptic interfaces that eliminate rotation joints or screw mechanisms that induce friction, increase weight and cost, and make devices more complex and prone to failure. The resulting compliant haptic device was designed with both affordability and dependability in mind, and hopes to result in research knowledge leading to realistic touch experiences as users interact with virtual or remote environments. The joint may also be applicable …

Safety Of Tubular Nylon Webbing: The Effect Of Wet And Cold Environments, Caleb Duncan, Landon Wright, John Salmon

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Tubular nylon webbing is an effective and relatively inexpensive anchoring solution for search and rescue groups, fire departments, canyoners, and rock climbers. As an anchoring solution nylon webbing is vital to the safety of anyone who uses it. Serious injury or death will often occur if an anchor fails.

All commercially available webbing is labeled with a breaking strength so that the end user is aware of its limits. This breaking strength value is obtained by the manufacture after running many tensile pull tests of dry webbing. While the dry breaking strength is reported by the manufacture no information, other …

Effect Of Thickness On Fatigue Life On Creased Thin Pla, Peter Schleede, Larry Howell

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Origami-based engineering creates products that solve problems inherent in other designs. For example, they can compress into smaller volumes, achieve new and unique motions, and lessen or mitigate numbers of welds, fasteners, or other joining methods. However, a weakness of these designs is the necessity of folding them and seams that result from that folding. If viable, 3D printing these designs would eliminate the need for complicated folding machinery or adhesives to close the seams. Since origami is, by its nature, dynamic, this research aims to help designers predict fatigue lives (number of cycles until failure) of thin, printed PLA …

Droplets Rolling On Superhydrophobic Inclines Simulating Real World Application Environments, Braquel Burnett, Julie Crockett

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Superhydrophobic surfaces offer unique characteristics such as extreme water repellency, drag reduction and enhanced condensation rates. These effects are possible due to a combination of micro/nano-texturing and a hydrophobic chemical coating. With the advent of micro/nano-fabrication, research and development on superhydrophobic surfaces has sky-rocketed due to the potential advantages across multiple industries including lab-on-a-chip technology, micro-electronic cooling and anti-icing applications.

The Influence Of Crystallographic Constraints On Percolation, Jarrod Lund, Oliver Johnson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Within polycrystalline materials (e.g. metals and ceramics), grain boundary networks (GBN) influence the effective properties such as diffusion, conductivity, and crack and creep propagation¹. In precision applications such as jet engine turbine blades and solid oxide fuel cells, understanding and characterizing GBN are essential for better design. Modeling GBN allow for better exploration of the complex space of possible networks (figure 1d)². By modeling grains in a honeycomb lattice (figure 1a), grain boundaries can be identified by their misorientation angle (figure 1b). This can be a key indicator of the grain boundary’s properties. By combining information …

Energy From Thin Air: Compressed Air Power Harvesting Systems, Zachary Sadler, Matthew Jones

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Energy is an important resource within the world we live. The demand for power requires new energy resources. Much of the power that is generated is eventually wasted in the form of waste heat. As much as 435 GW of energy is transferred from virtually all energy conversion devices and processes to the atmosphere as wasted heat ^[1]. Converting as much as one percent of this waste heat into electrical power would eliminate the need for 18 average size (236 MW) ^[2] coal red power plants. A significant portion of this waste heat production is due to air compression …