Engineering Commons^™

Design, Fabrication And Characterization Of Zero Power Sensor/Harvester For Smart Grid Applications, Zeynel Guler

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

This study presents a flexible sensor/harvester device to be used in both electromagnetic sensing and energy harvesting applications for smart grids. When a current passes through a wire, the sensor detects the magnetic field created by that current. The sensor magnet interacts with the wire magnetic field resulting in a transfer of energy through the piezoelectric cantilever. Piezoelectric, conductive, magnetic, and magnetostrictive composite thin films were prepared to fabricate this device.

Initially, the magnet of the cantilever was optimized considering its shape, thickness, length, taper angle etc. via both simulations and experiments. Peak to peak voltage versus cantilever position graph …

Tailoring Thermoresponsive Poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide) Toward Sensing Perfluoroalkyl Acids, Dustin Thomas Savage

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

Widespread distribution of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the environment combined with concerns for their potentially negative health effects has motivated regulators to establish strict standards for their surveillance. The United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a cumulative domestic threshold of 70 ppt for water supplies, and this bar is even lower in some local districts and other countries. Monitoring PFAS consequently requires sensitive analytical equipment to meet regulatory specifications, and liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectroscopy (LC/MS/MS) is the most common technique used to satisfy these requirements. Though extremely sensitive, the instrument is often burdened by pretreatment regimens, …

Tunable Photonic Multilayers From Stimulus-Responsive, Photo-Crosslinkable Polymers, Maria C. Chiappelli

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation describes the synthesis of photo-crosslinkable copolymers and their utilization for the fabrication and testing of tunable and responsive one-dimensional (1D) photonic multilayers. Photonic multilayers exhibit structural color due to the interference of incident light at layer interfaces, providing a convenient route towards optically responsive materials that do not rely on potentially light- or oxygen-sensitive chromophore-containing pigments and dyes. A fabrication technique based on sequential spin-coating and crosslinking of photo-crosslinkable polymers is used to assemble tunable and responsive photonic multilayers. Chapter One introduces the fundamental underlying principles of 1D photonic structures and explores their importance in a variety of …

Irrigation Leak Detection: Using Flow Rate Sensors To Detect Breaks In An Irrigation System, Adam Openshaw, Kalvin Vu

Computer Engineering

This report details the exploration and invention of a mechanism that can detect breaks in an irrigation system. With the ultimate goal of conserving water, we have designed an inexpensive, self sustaining flow rate monitor that can be used to identify anomalies in an irrigation system and wirelessly communicate the status of the system to a base station. Our implementation can also determine the direction of the anomaly based on the nature of the anomaly itself. This means that multiple monitors can be used to pinpoint the location of a break within the system in addition to merely detecting its …