Engineering Commons^™

Mems 411: Dog Mobility Aid, Grace Vinson, Amber Griffith, Thomas Liu

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Henry, an 8-year-old dog, suffers from an angular limb deformity. We created a mobility aid for Henry to improve his quality of life. This device functions similarly to a crutch attached to the affected arm to eliminate compressive forces on his metacarpals.

Mems 411 - Prosthetic Arm Group W, Spencer Gladstone, Lila Dickstein, Nate Bloedorn, Matthew Riak

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The customer, Ilana, sought to find a prosthetic arm to replace her current static
prosthetic. She has gotten used to using a prosthetic with no variable grips and
a somewhat heavy weight that can be a burden when dealing with her child or
day to day tasks. The design described in this report is an electronically powered
prosthetic that used a button to change between open and closed grips.

Mems 411: The Rock Collecting Rover Design Project, Henry Collins, Sam Mattecheck, Connor Burke

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The rock collecting over project challenged groups to construct a small,, remote controlled rover that is able to move and collect dice.

Mems 411: Remotely Operated Rock Collecting Vehicle, Perry Brody, Toby Utterback, Annie Mascot, Bianca Lang

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

We were tasked with designing a remote-controlled vehicle that is capable of collecting and holding “rocks”. The device had to be battery powered and operated by an RC transmitter/receiver. The physical constraints required the vehicle to fit within the designated 5.25’’ diameter and 8.5’’ long cylinder. The goal was to maximize the number of "rocks" collected in 5 minutes.

Mems 411: Cnc Fabric Dispenser, Hayato Takai, Lizbet Suarez Mendoza, Jp Bermudez, Jeffrey Dai

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This project aims to help Mary Ruppert-Stroescu with her zero-waste fashion project. The goal of this tool is to help Mary efficiently lay down fabric across a sheet of sticky paper to make a yard of reused fabric. The goal of our team was to create a machine that can work alongside Mary, rather than having her spend all her time at the machine. We wanted to make a machine that can work independently of Mary, so that she can focus her time on other things.

100s of lbs of fabric waste is part of American today. Mary's mission is …

Mems 411: Air Capture Dynamic Seal, Erik Truitt, Thomas Rexing, Cole Kelez, Hernan Perez

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

For the DAC (direct air capture) machine, a CO₂ collecting machine, it needs a seal that allows rotation while still being airtight. Currently, a liquid seal is used but is having issues with contamination and evaporation.

Mems 411: Softball Pitching Machine, Sebastian Laboy, Molly Mcnamara, Thomas Burke

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report includes our complete final project for MEMS 411 in the Fall 2022 semester. For this project, we chose to fill the need for a pitching machine solely focused on the needs of softball players. For this project, our customer is a collegiate softball player named McKenna Jablonske.

Mems 411: Dynamic Seal, Devin Fredericks, Abdul Majeed Lalani, Matthew Schmidt, Edward Tinnemeyer

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The purpose of this design project is to design a dynamic seal to be used on AirCapture’s carbon capture machine. The task is to create an air-tight seal between the top and bottom halves of AirCapture’s carbon capture machine. The seal needs to be capable of periodically rotating and must not leak while in operation.

Mems 411: Group B Prosthetic Arm Design, Gage Fuller, Abby Jaeger, Oliver Reid, Max Gordon

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design a custom prosthetic arm for a customer who is missing her arm two inches past her elbow. Introduce mobility so that she can utilize the arm to perform more everyday tasks than she was able to before with her immobile arm.

Mems 411: Frame Redesign For A Dac Machine, Alyssa Bolander, Aaron Lombardi, Harry Hixson

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report focuses on the redesign of a 3’’ T-slot aluminum DAC frame. This design process focuses on minimizing cost and fasteners as the new frame will be made out of welded square steel tubing.

Mems 411: Torsion Tester Design Report, Ethan Bandick, Sean Wong, Jacob Sandler, Matthew Lorberg

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of this project is to provide the customer, Dr. James Jackson Potter, with a lightweight, inexpensive, and accurate alternative to modern, professional torsion-testing machines. The torsion tester developed by this team will be used in a classroom setting for design competitions on 3-D printed ABS plastic torsion bars; therefore the design also accommodate a range of functions which might be useful to the customer during testing competitions, potentially including automatic stopping at failure, a reset function, and the ability to create custom functions which can integrate into the existing function library.

Mems 411: T-Shirt Strip Dispenser, Christian Alexander, Joseph Goehring, David / Qifeng Tian, Justin / Jingze Zhou

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

To create a fabric dispenser for Professor Mary Ruppert-Stroescu of the Sam Fox Fashion Design School.

Mems 411: Group Q Rock-Collecting Rover, William Pohl, Kieran Conjar, Chris Mabley, Major Kc

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design a remote controlled Rock-Collecting Rover that can store 35 rocks while moving, can navigate a snake-track without hitting the lines in 5 minutes, and can successfully collect 80% of the rocks it approaches.

Mems 411: Racecar Cruise Control, Jonah Spencer, Jacob Wheelock, Amay Kejriwal

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The WashU Racing team is a student group at formula student which annually designs, builds, and tests a 1/3rd scale formula racecar. This project explores the use of an electronically actuated throttle to implement cruise control on the WashU Racing formula student racecar. Through the use of new and existing sensors on the car, in depth engine modeling, and vehicle dynamics, our team was able to make the car accelerate up to and maintain a certain speed

Mems 411: Asme Student Design Vehicle, Raymond Sullivan, Matthew Spichiger, Daniel Melka

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design a robot to compete in the 2022 ASME Design Competition

Mems 411: Best Prosthetic Arm, Zhun Cheng, Finn Witt, Alexander Abdulla, Zhuoqun Wang

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Prosthetic is generally used to aid people with disabilities and perform tasks otherwise hard for them. As our senior design project, we designed and built a prototype prosthetic partial forearm for a customer to be used in her daily life and work. The important needs of the customer towards the prosthetic were identified, which were: being lightweight, simply actuatable, aesthetically discrete, easily detachable, resilient, easy to clean, safe for children, and easy to carry.

Mems 411: T-Shirt Strip Dispenser, Andrei Schwartz, Evan Dorsel, Amy Gong, Rosie Finglass

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Develop a device to facilitate the t-shirt strip lay down process for Prof. Mary Ruppert-Stroescu

Mems 411: Fire Temperature Gradient Sensor, Anna-Sophia Eberhardt, Dexter Allen, Christopher Allen, Mikayla Jenkins

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Fire Temperature Gradient Sensor to understand the interaction between prescribed forest floor burns and tick-borne disease ecology.

Design And Simulation Of Intelligent Control Algorithms For Bimanual Robot-Assisted Retinal Surgery Training System, Ali Ebrahimi

Link Foundation Modeling, Simulation and Training Fellowship Reports

Vitreoretinal surgery is among the most delicate surgical tasks in which physiological hand tremor may severely diminish surgeon performance and put the eye at high risk of injury. Unerring targeting accuracy is required to perform precise operations on micro-scale tissues of the eye. The objective of this project is to develop robotic platforms and intelligent control algorithms to provide a safe bilateral steady-hand eye manipulation for surgeons, which can potentially lead to autonomous surgical procedures. This will in tum enhance patient safety and surgical outcome which can be very beneficial to both patients and surgeons.

2022 (Fall) Ensi Informer Magazine, Morehead State University. Engineering Sciences Department

ENSI Informer Magazine Archive

The ENSI Informer Magazine published in the fall of 2022.

Molten Salt Thermal Properties Database – Thermochemical Development And Thermodynamic Assessment Of Various Molten Salt Systems, Johnathon Chandler Ard

Theses and Dissertations

The Molten Salt Thermal Properties Database – Thermochemical (MSTDB-TC) is a validated open-source database for thermochemical modeling of molten salt reactor (MSR) relevant fluoride and chloride salt systems. The database has been created and populated by leveraging available models from literature as well as completing novel system assessments. The development and contents of the MSTDB-TC v1.2 initial release are detailed along with various system assessments performed in the course of the work. The database utilizes a major strength of the CALPHAD thermodynamic modeling method. This is the ability to estimate higher-order system behavior by combining modeled lower-order systems, …

Self-Sensing Smart Products In Smart Manufacturing Systems, Juergen Lenz, Eric Macdonald, Ramy Harik, Thorsten Wuest

Faculty Publications

We are surrounded by a growing number of products with embedded intelligence relying on sensors and internet access. These smart products, that already transform our lives, are also physical entities that need to be manufactured. Manufacturing today similarly relies on data and data-driven insights to improve quality, efficiency, and safety on the shopfloor. This paper discusses the vision to utilize the ability of smart products to sense and communicate already during their own manufacturing to enrich the smart manufacturing system’s data for better insights development and optimization. We furthermore, discuss the barriers and opportunities embedded in such a paradigm shift.

Nemesis Setup For Indirect Detection Of Wimps, W. H. Trzaska, Alexander Barzilov, T. Enqvist, K. Jedrzejczak, J. Joutsenvaara, M. Kasztelan, O. Kotavaara, P. Kuusiniemi, K. K. Loo, J. Orzechowski, J. Puputti, M. Slupecki, J. Szabelski, I. Usoskin, T. E. Ward

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

We summarize the evidence for DM-like anomalies in neutron multiplicity spectra collected underground with Pb targets by three independent experiments: NEMESIS (at 210 m.w.e.) NMDS (at 583 m.w.e.), and ZEPLIN-II (at 2850 m.w.e.). A new analysis shows small but persistent anomalies at high neutron multiplicities. Adjusted for differences in detection efficiencies, the positions of the anomalies are consistent between the three systems. Also, the intensities match when corrected for the acquisition time and estimated detection efficiency. While the three measurements are inconclusive when analyzed separately, together, they exclude a statistical fluke to better than one in a million. To prove …

Increased Panel Height Enhances Cooling For Photovoltaic Solar Farms, Sarah E. Smith, Bianca Viggiano, Naseem Ali, Timothy J. Silverman, Martin Obligado, Marc Calaf, Raul Bayoan Cal

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems suffer substantial efficiency loss due to environmental and internal heating. However, increasing the canopy height of these systems promotes surface heat transfer and boosts production. This work represents the first wind tunnel experiments to explore this concept in terms of array flow behavior and relative convective heat transfer, comparing model solar arrays of varied height arrangements - a nominal height, extended height, and a staggered height configuration. Analyses of surface thermocouple data show average Nusselt number (𝑁𝑢) to increase with array elevation, where panel convection at double height improved up to 1.88 times that of the …

Experimental Investigations Of Yarn Pull-Out Behavior In Kevlar®: Influence Of Applied Metallic Coatings And Effect Of Dynamic Loading, Julie Ann Roark

Theses and Dissertations

Flexible woven Kevlar® textile fabrics are widely used in protective armor applications. Yarn pull-out, comprised of yarn uncrimping (i.e., straightening) and yarn translation, is a major energy absorption mechanism during ballistic impact onto these fabrics, especially for impact velocities below the ballistic limit. Yarn pull-out is influenced by various parameters including inter-yarn friction, pull-out distance, pull-out velocity, transverse pre-tension, fiber diameter, fabric architecture, fabric waviness, fabric count and yarn modulus.

The first part of this thesis investigates yarn pull-out behavior of commercially available Kevlar® KM2+ individual yarns coated with metallic layers (copper, aluminum, aluminum nitride, silver) via a directed vapor …

Uncrewed Aircraft Systems For Autonomous Infrastructure Inspection, Michail Kalaitzakis

Theses and Dissertations

Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) are becoming increasingly popular for infrastructure inspections since they offer increased safety, decreased costs and consistent results, compared to traditional methods. However, there are still many open challenges before fully autonomous, reliable, and repeatable UAS inspections. While a UAS platform has increased mobility and can easily approach hard to reach areas, it has limited range and payload capacity and is susceptible to environmental disturbances. Therefore, current operations are limited to Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) manual inspections that usually result in just a qualitative (visual) assessment of the structure.

The objective of this work is to …

Fabrication Of Asymmetrical Hollow Fiber-Supported Thin Film Membranes, Stack Assembly, And Accelerated Long-Term Stability Test For Oxygen Production From Air, Myongjin Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Air separation is a widely used process for oxygen production. Several separation technologies have been developed for air separation, including cryogenic distillation, swing adsorption, redox process of metal oxides, and electrochemical process. Among these technologies, electrochemical permeation process stands out as a cost-effective and simple process for pure oxygen production from air. The electrochemical permeation process employs a gas-tight membrane to permeate and separate oxygen from air directly, where the membrane conducts both ions and electrons simultaneously. Different membrane designs have been studied to obtain the improved performance for oxygen permeation, typically planar and tubular designs. Among these membrane configurations, …

Shear Localization In The Metallic Nanolayered Composites, Shujing Dong

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, the influences of layer thickness (h), interface orientation relationship (OR) and dislocation slip activities on shear band (SB) formation mechanisms was investigated by means of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.

The effect of h and dislocation slip systems on the shear localization in Cu-FCC/Nb-BCC MNCs was studied. The strain softening observed in those samples was triggered by the SB formation. The microstructure evolutions and dislocation slips revealed that the unsymmetrical dislocation transmission across the interface induces the shear localization and promotes the SB formation. The quantitative analysis of the change in the separation distance of initially …

Use Of Dic Measurements With Finite Element Models For Direct Heterogeneous Material Property Determination And Wrinkle Formation During Automated Fiber Placement, Sreehari Rajan Kattil

Theses and Dissertations

In this work, application of DIC in combination with finite element modeling is demonstrated for efficient material characterization for complex heterogeneous materials and tow wrinkle formation during automated fiber placement.

The first part of the work describes the integration of DIC measurements with finite element models for direct property identification in heterogeneous material systems. The material property identification is based on solving partial differential equations (PDE) of equilibrium for unknown elastic material properties with known boundary conditions and full field strain data (Eg. DIC). The PDEs are solved numerically using Petrov-Galerkin finite element procedure. The classical Bubnov-Galerkin method is shown …

High-Throughput Computation Of Interfacial Thermal Management Of Wide-Bandgap Semiconductors, Hao-Wen Chen

Theses and Dissertations

As semiconductor electronics, in particular high electron mobility transistors, get hot in operation, people are trying to incorporate different semiconductor materials to solve the problem of heat dissipation to maintain the device efficiency and performance. In this master thesis, two different packages, LAMMPS and almaBTE, that are focusing on micro-scale and atomic scale respectively, are used to simulate the heat transfer process across interfaces in two different scales. In the LAMMPS simulation, the research is exploring how the location of atoms and the thickness of interfacial layers will influence the interfacial thermal conductance. On the other hand, using the almaBTE …