Engineering Commons^™

Low-Cost Reaction Wheel Design For Cubesat Applications, Nicholas J. Bonafede Jr.

Master's Theses

As science instruments on CubeSats become more sensitive to the attitude of the spacecraft, better methods must be employed to provide the accuracy needed to complete the planned mission. While systems that provide the accuracy required are available commercially, these solutions are not cost-effective, do not allow the design to be tailored to a specific mission, and most importantly, do not give students hand-on experience with attitude control actuators. This thesis documents the design, modeling, and simulation of a low-cost, student-fabricated, reaction wheel system for use in 3U CubeSat satellites. The entire design process for the development of this reaction …

Traffic Privacy Study On Internet Of Things – Smart Home Applications, Ayan Patel

Master's Theses

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been widely adopted in many different applications in recent years, such as smart home applications. An adversary can capture the network traffic of IoT devices and analyze it to reveal user activities even if the traffic is encrypted. Therefore, traffic privacy is a major concern, especially in smart home applications. Traffic shaping can be used to obfuscate the traffic so that no meaningful predictions can be drawn through traffic analysis. Current traffic shaping methods have many tunable variables that are difficult to optimize to balance bandwidth overheads and latencies. In this thesis, we study …

Boost Converter Inductor Sizing Effects On The Performance Of Mppt Algorithms, Alan Nonaka

Master's Theses

With solar power and other renewables set to take over the market in the coming decades, maximum power point tracking will be essential to optimizing power output. One underserved topic of research is the effect of inductor current ripple on performance of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithms. Many new topologies are focused on decreasing the ripple from PV source to increase efficiency and power output. However, not much has been done to show ripple degrading performance of MPPT algorithms. This study uses a boost converter topology to test the performance of constant duty cycle step Perturb and Observe (PO), …

Hydraulic Effects Of Perpendicular Water Approach Velocity On Meter Gate Flow Measurement, John M. Thorburn

Master's Theses

Accurate flow measurement is required to effectively manage water resources. California Senate Bill X7-7 (SB X7-7), legislates this need by requiring agricultural water providers serving areas greater than 25,000 acres to develop an Agricultural Water Management Plan (AWMP) and adopt pricing based at least partly on volumetric water deliveries (DWR, 2009). This study focused on two of the most common flow measurement/flow control devices used in California open channel water conveyance systems: the circular meter gate and the rectangular meter gate. Testing was conducted on three Armco-type (round gates over round discharge pipe) gates measuring 12”, 18”, and 24” and …

Pathfinding Interplanetary Bus Capability For The Cal Poly Cubesat Laboratory Through The Development Of A Phobos-Deimos Mission Concept, Alyssa M. Ralph

Master's Theses

With the rise of CubeSats and the demonstration of their many space applications, there is interest in interplanetary CubeSats to act for example as scientific investigations or communications relays. In line with the increasing demand for this class of small satellites, the Cal Poly CubeSat Lab (CPCL) seeks to develop a bus that could support an interplanetary science payload. To facilitate this, a mission concept to conduct science of the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, is investigated by determining the mission needs for a CubeSat in a Phobos-Deimos cycler orbit through the development of a baseline design to meet …

University Startup Accelerators: Startup Launchpads Or Vehicles For Entrepreneurial Learning?, Lynn E. Metcalf, Thomas M. Katona, Jonathan L. York

Industrial Technology and Packaging

Over the past decade, universities have invested heavily in startup accelerator programs; however, their role in the university entrepreneurial ecosystem is ambiguous. Are university startup accelerators intended to educate or are they created to facilitate business starts and to contribute to regional economic development? In contrast, most private-sector startup accelerators serve a consistent and differentiated role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem—they provide programming and resources to startups to increase the probability of a return on investment. Understanding the role of university startup accelerators is an important precursor to evaluating their impact and whether or not the return is worth the considerable …

Secondary Uses Of Ballutes After Aerocapture, Josiah Shelton

Master's Theses

Aerocapture is a method for spacecraft orbital insertion that is currently being assessed for use in interplanetary missions. This method would use a low periapsis hyperbolic entry orbit to induce drag allowing the spacecraft to slow down without the use of a propulsion system. This is accomplished by using a ballute (balloon parachute), which is released after the appropriate change in velocity necessary to achieve the desired planetary orbit. Once released, the ballute could deploy a secondary mission vehicle. A MATLAB simulation was run to understand the environment a secondary payload would undergo, such as heating and deceleration, as well …

Limitations Of Initial Orbit Determination Methods For Low Earth Orbit Cubesats With Short Arc Orbital Passes, James P. Johnson

Master's Theses

This thesis will focus on the performance of angles only initial orbit determi- nation (IOD) methods on observational data of low Earth orbit (LEO) CubeSats. Using data obtained by Lockheed Martin’s Space Object Tracking (SpOT) facil- ity, four methods: Gauss, Double-R, Gooding and Assumed Circular, will use different amounts of orbital arc to determine which methods perform the best in the short arc regime of less than 10 degrees of orbital arc. Once the best method for estimating the orbit is determined, there will be analysis on whether these IOD methods are accurate enough to predict a secondary observation session. …

The Use And Explanation Of The Phase Angle In Forced Vibration Testing, Nicholas R. Slavin, Ryan D. Thornton

Architectural Engineering

Forced vibration testing is a tool used to characterize a structure’s dynamic properties. When subjecting a structure to a forced harmonic load, the results help define the structure’s fundamental frequencies and dominant mode shapes. However, when conducting testing, it is difficult to determine the contributions of each mode to the response at a given location in the structure. The recorded response from a forced vibration test is a combination of unknown modal constituents. Excitation may not result in the pure, single mode response that the experimenter desires, but may instead result in a combination of modal responses that obscure the …

Comparing The Effectiveness Of Osha-10 Online And In-Person Safety Courses: Case Study, Timothy R. Bartolomei

Construction Management

Since 1970, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was designed to create a safe workplace for everyone, has increased safety awareness, and decreased occurrences of injury and death on construction-related job sites. Until 2001, construction safety education was taught through face-to-face interaction between an instructor and an employee. However, in 2001, safety courses became available through multiple online platforms with the ability to be completed virtually. Online safety courses provide an alternative from face-to-face training and allow the employee to complete the training at their own pace. However, some research indicates that online safety courses are not as effective …

Case Study: Diesel-Powered Loaders Compared To Hybrid Loaders In Heavy Civil Construction, Jesus O. Pena

Construction Management

With the construction industry constantly changing, the environmental impacts of greenhouses gases have become a huge concern. Many contractors are adapting and switching over to hybrid powered systems to allow for more energy saving methods for heavy equipment, an increase in productivity, and efficient construction equipment that comply with emission regulations. The goal for this paper is to analyze the feasibility of heavy civil construction companies switching over from conventional diesel-powered wheel loaders to hybrid wheel loaders. Due to the competitive and saturated market in roadwork construction, many contractors have already begun to invest into hybrid systems. This provides cost …

Combining Machine Learning And Empirical Engineering Methods Towards Improving Oil Production Forecasting, Andrew J. Allen

Master's Theses

Current methods of production forecasting such as decline curve analysis (DCA) or numerical simulation require years of historical production data, and their accuracy is limited by the choice of model parameters. Unconventional resources have proven challenging to apply traditional methods of production forecasting because they lack long production histories and have extremely variable model parameters. This research proposes a data-driven alternative to reservoir simulation and production forecasting techniques. We create a proxy-well model for predicting cumulative oil production by selecting statistically significant well completion parameters and reservoir information as independent predictor variables in regression-based models. Then, principal component analysis (PCA) …

Development And Optimization Of Imaging And Image Quantification Techniques For Tissue-Engineered Blood Vessel Mimics, Ashley Turcott

Master's Theses

Blood vessels mimics (BVMs) are tissue-engineered blood vessels used to test vascular devices in an environment that mimics some simple anatomical factors of native blood vessels. It is important to accurately and consistently assess tissue-engineered blood vessels, although there is currently a lack of standardization in Cal Poly’s Tissue Engineering Lab and in the entirety of the field. The goal of this thesis was to develop and optimize imaging and image quantification techniques for tissue-engineered blood vessels.

The first aim of this thesis optimized and compared imaging and assessment techniques for electrospun scaffolds. Images from different SEMs were compared to …

Identification Of Users Via Ssh Timing Attack, Thomas J. Flucke

Master's Theses

Secure Shell, a tool to securely access and run programs on a remote machine, is an important tool for both system administrators and developers alike. The technology landscape is becoming increasingly distributed and reliant on tools such as Secure Shell to protect information as a user works on a system remotely. While Secure Shell accounts for the abuses the security of older tools such as telnet overlook, it still has fundamental vulnerabilities which leak information about both the user and their activities through timing attacks. The OpenSSH client, the implementation included in all Linux, Mac, and Windows computers, sends each …

Senior Capstone Team Formation Based On Project Interest: Team Selection By Students Compared To Team Selection By Instructors, Peter Schuster, Lauren Anne Cooper, Eltahry Elghandour, Eileen W. Rossman, Sarah Harding, Brian P. Self

Mechanical Engineering

Assigning teams in large courses is logistically challenging and students are sometimes unhappy with their assigned team. This is exacerbated when the project work extends over multiple terms and teams have unique projects. Giving students some agency in team and project selection is one way to improve their project experience. This paper examines two key questions: (a) What is the best way to incorporate student interests into the team-forming process? (b) What impact does the team-forming process have on the student experience throughout the project?

We consider two different approaches to giving students agency in the team formation / project …

Short Run Box Maker, Jesus Valdez-Ruelas

General Engineering

Small businesses with short run product catalogs have trouble finding the right size box that will work for multiple products. In turn, this leads most businesses to use oversized boxes resulting in unnecessary shipping fees. The objective of this project was to develop and test a cost-effective prototype of a box making machine that could create a short run of custom sized boxes. A Co2 laser was found to be the best option for cutting cardboard and a vertically standing machine was designed to feed the cardboard via rollers. To control cardboard movement stepper motors were used and controlled using …

Data Acquisition, Analysis, And Modeling Of Rotordynamic Systems, Michael P. Mullen

Master's Theses

Data acquisition systems for rotordynamic analysis and machine vibration were explored for the purpose of replacing the obsolete Bently Nevada ADRE 208 and ADRE for Windows system. These included the development of Matlab based custom data acquisition systems and a user interface. A model of an anisotropic rotor response undergoing transient speed was developed for the rapid prototyping and testing of data acquisition systems. Several methods for the measurement of amplitudes and phase in both the time domain and frequency domain were developed and compared. An alternate data acquisition method which is more inline with industry practices was created for …

Otter Vector Extension, Alexis A. Peralta

Computer Engineering

This paper offers an implementation of a subset of the "RISC-V 'V' Vector Extension", v0.7.x. The "RISC-V 'V' Vector Extension" is the proposed vector instruction set for RISC-V open-source architecture. Vectors are inherently data-parallel, allowing for significant performance increases. Vectors have applications in fields such as cryptography, graphics, and machine learning. A vector processing unit was added to Cal Poly's RISC-V multi-cycle architecture, known as the OTTER. Computationally intensive programs running on the OTTER Vector Extension ran over three times faster when compared to the baseline multi-cycle implementation. Memory intensive applications saw similar performance increases.

Fire Protection And Life Safety Analysis Of A Chicago Hotel, Thomas Hampton

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

The following report contains an analysis of the life safety and fire protection features of a Chicago Hotel. The report is intended to meet the requirements for the Culminating Experience of the Cal Poly Master of Science Fire Protection Engineering Program.

The Chicago Hotel building chosen for the analysis is a mixed-use 7-story hotel. On the 1st, 2nd, and 7th floors of the building are spaces for mercantile and restaurant tenants as well as other spaces necessary for the operation of the building such as back of house space for the hotel, storage, employee locker rooms, hotel and retail lobbies, …

Cal Poly Engineering Iv Building, Kai Liu

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

This report analyzes the fire protection systems of Engineering IV building at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. It is a cumulative project of the Fire Protection Engineering Program at Cal Poly. The report consists of a prescriptive analysis and a performance-based design analysis. The building contains dry laboratories, classrooms, offices, and administrative spaces. The building is a three-story structure. There is an atrium that connects the first floor to the third floor. However, the building has a horizontal enclosure to separate the connection between the second floor and the third floor.

The prescriptive analysis is based on the …

Elewexe – Building 172b, California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo, Anna M. Santoro

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo recently finished constructing a new multimillion student housing project on campus. One of the six buildings, elewexe or 172B, from this housing complex was selected for a full evaluation of the fire and life safety systems using both prescriptive and performance based approaches. The building is a Type II-B four story dormitory with an R-2 occupancy classification.

For the prescriptive approach, the building was evaluated against the most current editions of the IBC and relevant NFPA code editions for building requirements, sprinkler design and fire alarm and detection. When looking at the …

Second Baptist Church, Cypress Campus, David Kalinec

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

This report was created as part of the Master of Science Fire Protection Engineering degree program at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. This project summarized the covered subjects during the course of each quarter of the program. The site chosen for this project is Second Baptist Church, Cypress Campus, located in Cypress, TX. This building was chosen because Churches are mixed use buildings that include assembly occupancies and large occupant loads.

A prescriptive-based code evaluation was performed on the building according to the 2012 editions of the international building code and fire code, adopted at the time …

Fire And Life Safety Analysis: Robert E Kennedy Library, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Campus, Christopher Olmstead

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

This report provides a fire safety analysis on the Robert E. Kennedy Library located on the Cal Poly University campus San Luis Obispo, California. In the course of this analysis, a prescriptive and performance-based approached was used. The goal was to review and obtain an understanding of the features of the building’s design and use that provide fire safety. During the analysis, areas of deficiency will be identified. Recommendations will be made based on the analysis and the nature of the deficiencies.

The overall goal is to abide by the NPFA Life Safety standard: (1) Protection of occupants not intimate …

Fire And Life Safety Analysis: San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art, Jason Woo

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

A fire and life safety analysis was conducted to fulfill a requirement for the Master of Science Degree in Fire Protection Engineering from California Polytechnic State University. A prescriptive and performance-based analysis was conducted on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The SFMOMA is a 10-story, 460,000 𝑓𝑡2 , Type 1A mixed occupancy building. Located in the northwest corner of San Francisco, SFMOMA houses a collection of over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, design and media making it one of the largest museums in the world for modern and contemporary art.

Four features of the prescriptive based analysis include: …

Research Laboratory: Fire, Explosion, And Life Safety Analysis, Dennis A. Tuma

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

This culminating report is a fire, explosion, and life safety evaluation of a Research Laboratory ("Laboratory") where significant quantities of flammable, combustible, and hazardous materials are used and stored. The report's initial portion provides a prescriptive-based analysis using applicable sections of the 2016 California Building Standard Codes and National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards. Because of the unique challenges to hazardous laboratory spaces, the prescriptive- based analysis includes both a review of codes applicable to all occupancies (e.g., egress, fire-resistance, building area), and codes applicable to Group H and L occupancies (e.g., electrical area classification maps, control areas). Unfortunately, detailed …

Powell Building, David John Devinney

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

A detailed study of the fire and life safety systems was performed on the Powell Building located in Oak Ridge, TN. This report consists of both prescriptive and performance-based analysis. The prescriptive based analysis reviews the fire and life safety requirements in accordance with the applicable codes. The prescriptive portion of this report included life safety, fire suppression systems, fire alarm and detection systems, and structural fire protection. The performance-based analysis was used with viable fire scenarios to ensure that occupants could safely egress the building. This was accomplished by comparing the Required Safe Egress Time (RSET) with the Available …

New Campus Life Center Fire Protection Evaluation, Shawn R. Block

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

This project report is a fire and life safety evaluation of a newly constructed building. The new Campus Life Center (CLC) building is located on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The CLC is a student center where students, staff, and guests can gather to socialize, study, eat and attend conferences. The prescriptive requirements were based on the Georgia State Fire Codes, adopted on January 2014 and served as code of record for this facility. Occupant classification was established from both International Building Code (IBC) and Life Safety Code (LSC), NFPA 101, to determine construction type, interior finish …

Fitness Plug, Evan Lee Ashley

Computer Engineering

My parents only allowed me to play videogames or watch television for a certain number of minutes or hours per day. By limiting screen time, they encouraged me to be active and find other things to do outside of television or videogames. The Fitness Plug aims to do both by converting time exercised to entertainment time; you can only watch television or play videogames for as long as you have exercised.

Heavenly Bodies Rsvp, Justin Tyler Spitzer, Allison Jean Turnbaugh, Jack William Boulware, Braden Alex Lockwood

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of the Heavenly Bodies RSVP project was to design and fabricate planet props, as well as a mechanism by which they could be raised and lowered in California Polytechnic State University’s Pavilion theater. The project team was comprised of four fourth year mechanical engineering students: Allison Turnbaugh, Braden Lockwood, Jack Boulware, and Justin Spitzer. We conducted extensive research to determine the ideal solution for the design problem brought to us by our sponsor. In our analysis, we discovered that the most important aspects of our design were the absolute reliability of the system, fire retardant material selection, and …

Cal Poly Microgrid Fixed Pv Array, Christopher L. Ewert, Justin R. Syracuse, Donald A. Syracuse, Jason M. Kehl

Mechanical Engineering

The Mechanical Engineering Department at California Polytechnic State University of San Luis Obispo would like an adjustable, fixed angle solar panel mount to help educate students on basic solar energy principles. Our team has developed a unique sawhorse design utilizing ideation techniques and design selection tools. The selected design allows for multiple panel adjustability and control of both azimuth and tilt angle. Safety concerns are addressed with action plans to mitigate risk. Concept prototypes to justify gearbox functionality and subsystem cohesion was utilized to reduce manufacturing issues. Manufacturing began in March 2020 and proceed through until the end of the …