Engineering Commons^™

Tracking Simulated Somatosensory Deficiencies That Affect Postural Stability Through Detrended Fluctuation Analysis, Cameron L. Steele

Honors Program Projects

Falls are a prevalent problem among elderly populations. Falls increase the cost of healthcare, frequently cause severe injuries, and negatively affect quality of life. Lack of postural stability is a major contributing factor to falls, with postural stability defined as the correct biomechanical execution based on sensory feedback. Types of sensory feedback include vision, vestibular, proprioceptive, and somatosensory. This study focuses on the lack of postural stability in quiet standing (standing upright and still) due to somatosensory and vision deficiencies. To track these deficiencies, fifty-one subjects stood for sixty seconds on two force plates, and their center of pressure (COP) …

Assessment Of Walls With Phase Change Materials Through Synergistic And Performance Measures Using Experimental And Simulated Test Houses, Cory J. Enfield

Honors Program Projects

Current research on living and working spaces continues to strive to identify the most energy-efficient methods for heating and cooling, and many novel technologies have emerged from the research. One of the most promising, and the topic of this quantitative analysis, is the retrofitting of phase change materials (PCMs) into the walls of structures. Research has shown positive results, such as a reduced transfer of heat through walls, when PCMs are retrofitted into wall construction. The present research takes previously gathered data from test houses, built with typical North American framing, and simulates an additional fourteen test houses from the …

Watseka Affordable Housing, Kiana Kruhulik, Benjamin Skolek, Allison Winter, Mikayla Zakutansky

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Students will design a small residential dwelling that will fit into the affordable housing development currently under consideration in Watseka.  The design will include architectural, structural, mechanical, and electrical design.  Substantial completion of design documents is required.

Plunger Inserter Device, Erik Firganek, Ben Martin, Christian Mikrut

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Design, and evaluate an ergonomic device that would automate or semi-automate the insertion of plungers into less than gallon (LTG) bottles.

Short Bar Removal, Austin Kasap, Connor Medina, Rodrigo Munoz

Student Scholarship – Engineering

During production, Nucor occasionally gets short steel bars that do not meet the length specifications of their customers. Currently, removing these bars is a manual process that requires 1-2 workers to remove the bars from the line manually, which is both time consuming and costly. Part of the challenge of this process is that bars come off a cooling bed and then they form a group of bars (so they can stack and bundle them for transport). This is the point where the short bars must be removed. It is the goal of the project to investigate and identify a …

Sheperd Community Campgrounds Cabin, Nathan Hart, Michael Hill, Hannah Taggart, Miles Vanderklok

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Students will design a small cabin building that will fit into the proposed camp near Columbus Ohio currently under consideration by Shepherd Church of the Nazarene in Gahanna Ohio. The design will include architectural, structural, mechanical, and electrical design. Substantial completion of design documents is required.

Vex-U Robotics, Rachel Meyer, Coby Mollema, Kalvin Quackenbush

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Every year, the ONU Robotics Team participates in the VEX U competition. The VEX U college and university competition has more than 300 teams competing annually. Based on the VEX Robotics Competition, VEX U teams are allowed more customization and greater flexibility than other grade levels while providing the effective costs and real-world limitations of a restricted development environment. The competition changes every school year (also referred as season) to provide new challenges for the teams. In the 2021-2022 season, the name of the competition is Tipping Point. Tipping Point is played on a 12’x12’ square field. Two Alliances – …

Fish Pond Aerator Energy Source, Matt George, Luke Johnson, Benjamin Ridler

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Previous senior design projects have designed an alternative aerator system for a tilapia farm in Guatemala. Instead of using a pump to create bubbles, a water agitator was designed. Given that the cost of electricity is roughly 50% of the cost to produce tilapia, the need for this semester is to design and suggest alternative sources of energy (e.g., solar, wind, hydro energy). In addition, strategies to reduce the cost of energy (e.g., on/off cycling, demand analysis) are welcome. Finally, all these options must be evaluated through computer simulations or similar engineering analysis.

In-Line Leak Detection, Nate Mayo, Ben Murfin, Dan Pietz

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Develop and in-line leak detection system for the bottle packaging lines.

Perry Center Supplemental Heating, Bekah Kruger, Sam Lonard, Nick Willis

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Students will design a supplemental heat system to help increase the temperature of the fluid in the Geothermal heat system.  Currently the Geothermal system does not provide adequate heating for Perry Center during the winter.  A heat exchanger has been proposed by the Physical Plant to remedy the problem.

In-Line Profile/Easy Open Inspection, Margaux Catafort-Silva, Kyle Pearson, Josh Turner

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Design, build, and test a device that has the capability of visually inspecting our zipper profiles on our production lines for start-ups or a device that can detect easy-open/weak zippers during regular production.

Sae-Baja 4wd Redesign, Alex Detcher, Samuel Goin, James Legrand, Javier Martinez, Tyler Minogue, Wyatt Wagner

Student Scholarship – Engineering

In collaboration with the Baja SAE club, this senior design team is tasked with designing and fabricating a Baja vehicle with the goal of competing with competitive success in a 2021-22 Baja SAE Collegiate Design Series competition. The project will include all aspects of the vehicle, including but not limited to: roll cage, suspension, steering/control, and drivetrain. Also, a goal of the project is to design the vehicle with the future AWD/4WD Baja requirement in mind, while making every effort to meet that goal for this upcoming Baja competition. The team will also manage the ONU Baja SAE Club which …

Automatic Tail-Cutter, Miles Hardesty, David Hutton, Kevin Vroman

Student Scholarship – Engineering

The goal of this project is to design and test a universal ramp that guides runners into any size grinder that may be a short distance away from the press. Design consideration will be key to this project. It should be lightweight, easy to install, while considering other relevant design considerations as well. In addition, the universal ramp will need to be able to mount to any style press we have. The runners will vary in length and width, so the universal ramp will need to be able to change size to accommodate for the different sizes of runners.

Angle Iron Profile Rotator, Ethan Hodel, Dan Lahners, Gavin Muhlstadt

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Design and validate a system that can rotate various angle iron profiles in a conveyor system. Angle irons are initially positioned with their longest leg resting on the conveyor system. It is needed to rotate it certain degrees until it forms the ^ shape. That is, the ends of the legs touch the conveyor system. The angle irons can be of different lengths (10’ to 40’). The design and validation must be done through engineering calculations (e.g., dynamical analysis and/or finite element analysis). Finally, a small-scale proof of concept is needed as a deliverable, in addition to the design and …

Watseka Pavilion, Jacob Esselstyn, Josh Hagan, Geovanni Martinez, Elijah Mendoza

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Students will design an open-air pavilion for the city park in Watseka.  The design will include architectural and structural design.  Substantial completion of design documents is required.

Buv Canopy, Nathanael Coyle, Seth Ernest, Nathan Johnson

Student Scholarship – Engineering

Design a flexible canopy for the BUV driver for sun protection and light rain protection.

Centralized Wastewater System, Gabe Ferguson, Caleb Inorio, Ashton Loitz, Byshop Williams

Student Scholarship – Engineering

The Village of Sanford, alongside the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity and volunteer committees of developers, are considering options to build back housing stock that was lost during the flooding. There are multiple potential lots in the Village that are being explored, with about 15-20 being potential sites to be investigated. Habitat for Humanity will facilitate the rebuilding of single family homes, but will need engineering expertise where it concerns the sanitation systems for multi-family homes, condos, townhomes, or potentially a senior center. There is no centralized wastewater system for the Village, so, engineering options would need to look …

Dewaxing Bulding Containment, Liam Gahan, Katarina Nikolic, Emily Ziemba

Student Scholarship – Engineering

This project will be on the Nutrition and Health side of Kensing where we manufacture Vitamin E. The problem for the students to solve will be the lack of secondary containment for our dewaxing building. The building uses acetone to thin the vitamin E for filtering to remove pesticides. We used to have onsite waste treatment, so the acetone could go right to our process sewer, but the onsite waste treatment has since been removed. If acetone goes to the process sewer today (i.e. if a spill were to occur), we would be fined by the city. If we plug …

Thermal And Orbital Analysis Of Darkness Cubesat, Katie Dickey

Honors Program Projects

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is sending a 3U CubeSat into LEO to search for a 3.5 keV photon corresponding to the decay of a theorized dark matter particle called the sterile neutrino. The CubeSat will encounter environmental variations while in orbit that can be computed through an orbital analysis using System’s Tool Kit. In order to minimize thermal noise readout, improve optical resolution, and increase bandwidth, the sensors must be kept below 170K while taking data. This temperature is difficult to achieve due to radiation from the Sun and the Earth’s albedo radiation. Through the thermal analysis, the lowest temperature …

Performance Analysis Of An Exhaust Heat Recovery System Utilizing Heat Pipes, Metal Foam, And Thermoelectric Generators, Michael Resciniti

Honors Program Projects

Developing efficient thermoelectric generator systems to recover wasted thermal energy from automotive exhaust gasses has potential to improve engine efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Due to their high thermal transfer efficiency, heat pipes have been used to assist thermoelectric generator systems in these applications. To aid in additional heat transfer, metal fins are often used with heat pipes to take advantage of extended-surface heat transfer. This paper proposes a thermoelectric generator system that employs metal foam as an extended-surface heat transfer aid used in conjunction with heat pipes. Three test conditions were simulated to evaluate the system performance in terms …

Evaluating The Scalability Of The Sonication Method Of Graphene Oxide Synthesis, Evan Dexter

Honors Program Projects

Graphene is a new material that was first isolated in 2004, and consists of one to a few atomic layers of carbon in a lattice sheet structure. Graphene has high tensile strength, high surface area, very low electrical resistance, and various other special properties that make it an excellent material for use in emerging technologies in the categories of electrical components, energy systems, and high strength applications. The production scale of graphene sheets and its variations is currently limited to laboratory use, with increasing research being conducted toward the development of manufacturing techniques of the material. We conducted experiments to …

The Effect Of Flinak Molten Salt Corrosion On The Hardness Of Hastelloy N, David Kok

Honors Program Projects

The desire to reduce pollution caused by electricity production has led to a call for the replacement of conventional fossil fuel power plants. In order to fulfill this goal, a large amount of new nuclear reactors is required, and this provides the opportunity to put new and innovative reactor designs into production. The Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) is one of the most promising concepts, but a suitable combination of molten salt and container material needs to be found to reduce the potential for corrosion before the concept can be put into production. FLiNaK molten salt and the nickel-based alloy Hastelloy …

Weed And Crop Discrimination Through An Offline Computer Vision Algorithm, Phillip Jamison Putney

Honors Program Projects

With the recent global interest in organic farming and cultivation, many people are turning away from chemical-based herbicides and moving towards alternate methods to extirpate weeds living amongst their crops. Of the methods proposed, robotic weed detection and removal is the most promising because of its possibility to be completely autonomous. Several robust, fully-autonomous robots have been developed, although none have been approved for commercial use. This paper proposes a weed and crop discrimination algorithm that utilizes an excessive green filter paired with principal component analysis to detect specific spatial frequencies within an image corresponding to different types of weeds …

Vocal Processing With Spectral Analysis, Bradley Fitzgerald

Honors Program Projects

A well-known signal processing issue is that of the “cocktail party problem”, which refers to the need to be able to separate speakers from a mixture of voices. A solution to this problem could provide insight into signal separation in a variety of signal processing fields. In this study, a method of vocal signal processing was examined to determine if principal component analysis of spectral data may be used to characterize differences between speakers and if these differences may be used to separate mixtures of vocal signals. Processing was done on a set of voice recordings from 30 different speakers …

3d Printed Filar Micrometer, Emily Rull

Honors Program Projects

Background

Double stars are celestial objects that allow for calculating the mass of stars by assessing their orbits. Stellar mass affects every current model of stellar evolution, but the most accurate double star orbits can take decades to record. Due to the long-term nature of such observations and lack of groundbreaking research in double star studies, professional astronomers are no longer focused on making these measurements, so amateur astronomers can pick up where professionals have left off. Amateurs can only do this if they can get the equipment that they need at prices they can afford. A personally-manufactured filar micrometer …

Using The Moment Of Inertia As A Means Of Better Controlling The Speed Of Wind Turbines, Garrett L. Muhlstadt

Honors Program Projects

In the following document, the possibility of using the moment of inertia as a means of speed control for a wind turbine is explored. This document gives an introduction to wind energy and current speed control methods. This information was obtained through databases found at Benner Library. Also, an experiment was used to collect data and determine the relationship between the moment of inertia and angular velocity of a turbine. A model turbine was fabricated and powered by a fan while a Logger Pro program was used to record the angular velocity of the turbine. The moment of inertia of …

Scholar Week, James Upchurch

Scholar Week Archives (2011-2015)

ONU's Scholar Week #5.

Scholar Week, Janna Mclean

Scholar Week Archives (2011-2015)

ONU's Scholar Week #4.

Detection Systems For Airbag Deployment, Ryan S. Kee

Honors Program Projects

The airbag enablement system in today’s automobiles is not ideal and may allow airbags to deploy when they should not. Weight sensors detect pressure when someone sits in a passenger seat, enabling the airbag to deploy if an accident occurs. This system is flawed. For example, if a heavy box is placed in a passenger seat, the airbag will be unnecessarily enabled. The goal of this research project was to determine if different sensors—not weight sensors or cameras—could be used to identify the occupant of an automobile seat.

Using a microchip programmed in C language, a circuit was designed with …

Scholar Week, Gregg A. Chenoweth

Scholar Week Archives (2011-2015)

ONU's Scholar Week flyer #3.