Engineering Commons^™

Optical Switch, Richard N. Savage

Materials Engineering

An optical switch for transmitting light between a first location and a selected one of a plurality of second locations. The switch includes a mirror having a concave, reflective surface and an axis. The switch also includes a plurality of fiber optic cables, one of which is disposed at the first location and the remainder of which are disposed at the second locations, each cable having a light transmission face at their respective locations. The light transmission face at the first location is substantially parallel to the focal plane of the mirror. The light transmission face at each of the …

Spray Drift Reduction With Shrouded Boom Sprayers, Ronald J. Fehringer, Richard Cavaletto

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

Downwind drift was measured from a standard boom sprayer and a shrouded boom sprayer. Using 8002 flat fan nozzles, the hooded sprayer provided a 180 to 275% reduction in drift. The effectiveness of the shroud is dependent upon the spray droplet spectrum.

Synergy Of Artificial Neural Networks And Knowledge-Based Expert Systems For Intelligent Fms Scheduling, Luis Carlos Rabelo, Sema E. Alptekin, Ali S. Kiran

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In this paper we describe a hybrid architecture that integrates artificial neural networks and knowledge-based expert systems to generate solutions for the real time scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems. The artificial neural networks perform pattern recognition and, due to their inherent characteristics, support the implementation of automated knowledge acquisition and refinement schemes through a feedback mechanism. The artificial neural network structures enable the system to recognize patterns in the tasks to be solved in order to select the best scheduling rule according to different demands. The knowledge-based expert systems are the higher order elements which drive the inference strategy and …

A Suggested Model Program For Cim Education, Sema E. Alptekin

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

No abstract provided.

Adaptive Scheduling And Control Using Artificial Neural Networks And Expert Systems For A Hierarchical/Distributed Fms Architecture, Luis Carlos Rabelo, Sema E. Alptekin

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

An adaptive expert scheduler was developed that learns by itself and adapts to the dynamic FMS environment. This hybrid system uses a symbiotic architecture composed of expert systems (ESs) and artificial neural networks (ANNs) and provides a learning scheme guided by past experience. The artificial neural networks recognize patterns in the tasks to be solved in order to select the best scheduling rule according to different criteria. The expert systems, on the other hand, drive the inference strategy and interpret the constraints and restrictions imposed by the upper levels of the control hierarchy of the flexible manufacturing system. The level …

Irrigation District Canal Automation - Cardd, Charles M. Burt

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The first rule regarding irrigation district canal automation is that there is no single "best" method of automations. The locations of buffer reservoirs, the ability to allow water to spill at the ends of canals, the storage capacity of canal pools, and the topography will also play key roles in deciding if automation is desirable, and what type of automation should be used. These typical engineering considerations must also be coupled with recognition of the limitations and abilities of irrigation district staff regarding maintenance and trouble shooting of sophisticated controls.

Architecture For A Human-Robot Symbiotic System, Fred W. Depiero, Wayne W. Manges, Reid L. Kress, Mike R. Kedl, William R. Hamel

Electrical Engineering

This paper describes a human-robot symbiont that is under development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. An overview of the symbiotic system is described that motivates the architecture that has been developed. The architecture is a hierarchical structure that consists of several expert systems which reside above a robot control interface. This interface allows the manipulator to be operated in both a teleoperated and autonomous mode. All these processes coexist with the lowest level of the hierarchy, which is a numerically intensive control algorithm. The architecture is implemented on five processors in a coarsely parallel system.

A Transient Electromagnetic Flowmeter And Calibration Facility, Paul J. Lefebvre, William W. Durgin

Office of the Provost Scholarship

An electromagnetic flowmeter was developed to measure transient flows at a data rate of 60 Hz. The approach taken was to develop suitable electronics to replace the electronics of a commercially available electromagnetic flowmeter normally used for steady-state operation. Use of the commercially available flowmeter body, which includes the magnetic coils, core, and signal electrodes, provided a relatively economical means of fabricating the transient flowmeter. A transient flow calibration facility consisting of a free-falling water column was also designed and built. Results of the calibrations are presented and show that the flowmeter can accurately measure transient flows up to the …

An Indirect Sensing Technique For Closed-Loop Diesel Fuel Quantity Control, Carl A. Maccarley, Walter D. Clark, Keay T. Nakae

Electrical Engineering

Despite significant advances in electronic control technology applied to diesel engines, commercially available injection systems for automotive diesel engines remain limited by the open-loop mapping of the injection pump. An initial calibration is relied upon to translate a fuel delivery command to an actual fuel quantity. In practice, however, these two variables may be substantially different due to the effects of mechanical wear, repair, and the wide range of operating conditions. Possible ramifications of this discrepancy are excessive exhaust smoke due to overfueling, increased fuel consumption, degraded driveability, and poor idle characteristics. The major obstacle to closing the fuel control …

Ultrasonic Measurement Of The Geometric Parameters Of Gaseous Voids In Low Gravity Fluid Containers, A. T. Patten, William W. Durgin

Office of the Provost Scholarship

A demonstration system for the ultrasonic gauging of fluids in low-gravity has been designed and tested. For purposes of simplification, it was assumed that vapor within a liquid container in low-gravity would form a spherical bubble which would float freely in the container. The project was designed to show that ultrasonic techniques could be used to determine the geometry of the resulting sphere given a worst-case transducer arrangement. The motivation was to simplify transducer mounting requirements so that propellant or other storage vessels could be fitted with ultrasonic gauging systems with a single or perhaps a few transducer penetrations. Data …

Self-Mode-Locking Of A Semiconductor Laser Using Positive Feedback, Dennis J. Derickson, R. J. Helkey, A. Mar, P. A. Morton, J. E. Bowers

Electrical Engineering

A new mode-locking technique, self-mode-locking, is described which uses the detected optical pulses from the mode-locked laser as the active driving source. This technique forms narrow-width mode-locked optical pulses at low repetition rates without the use of a microwave synthesizer

Canal Control Training, Charles M. Burt

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

When compared to other industrial processes, irrigation processes are poorly controlled. Due to the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of many present aspects of irrigation, a high degree of non-transferrability, or "art", is associated with irrigation. The Irrigation Training and Research Center (ITRC) at Cal Poly is dedicated to finding a retirement home for "Art". T

There is a great potential for excellent on-farm irrigation water management. Many tools (center pivots, linear moves, surge irrigation, drip, laser land grading, to name a few) exist to enable farmers to distribute water evenly across their fields. Other tools (computerized irrigation scheduling programs, automated …

Water Seepage From Unlined Ditches And Reservoirs, Nigel W.T. Quinn, Richard B. Smith, Charles M. Burt, Tracy S. Slavin, Stuart W. Styles, Amir Mansoubi

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

Seepage losses in the San Joaquin Valley's Westlands Water Districts were estimated at 27,000 acre-feet a year, or about 2% of the district's water supply. Ditch configuration and construction techniques appear to influence seepage rates.

Use Of Technology For Undergraduate Engineering Education, B. A. Black, J. S. Demetry, J. G. Harris, J. R. Jones

Electrical Engineering

California Polytechnic State University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute have formed a consortium to develop an alternative learning environment centered around a workstation comprised of a personal computer interfaced to a video disk and laboratory instrumentation. The first phase in their collective effort has involved the development of four instructional modules in the fundamentals of electrical engineering. The results of the first phase efforts are presented. They demonstrate how four different universities can work together to agree on standards, and to prepare instructional material that can be shared. The second phase will …

Bodner-Partom Viscoplastic Constitutive Model And The Non Linear Finite Element Analysis Of A Stress Concentration At High Temperature, Faysal A. Kolkailah, A. J. Mcphate

Aerospace Engineering

The design and analysis of structural components to operate at elevated temperature and severe stress levels, such as a low-cycle fatigue-limited jet engine disk, require an accurate prediction of the nonlinear stress-strain . response encountered during the cyclic loading conditions. Nonlinear analysis of such components is normally carried out by a finite element code making use of constitutive theories in which the material response is separated into the two important groups of phenomena known as rate dependent "creep" and rate independent "plasticity." A number of viscoplastic. constitutive theories in which "creep" and ''plasticity" effects are combined _into a unified plastic …

Numerical Simulation Of F-18 Fuselage Forebody Flows At High Angles Of Attack, Lewis B. Schiff, Russell M. Cummings, Reese L. Sorenson, Yehia M. Rizk

Aerospace Engineering

As part of the NASA High Alpha Technology Program, fine-grid Navier-Stokes solutions have been obtained for flow over the fuselage forebody and wing leading edge extension of the F/A-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle at large incidence. The resulting flows are complex, and exhibit crossflow separation from the sides of the forebody and from the leading edge extension. A well-defined vortex pattern is observed in the leeward-side flow. Results obtained for laminar flow show good agreement with flow visualizations obtained in ground-based experiments. Further, turbulent flows computed at high-Reynolds-number flight-test conditions (M_∞ = 0.2, α = 30 °, and Re …

Numerical Representation Of Bodner Viscoplastic Constitutive Model, Faysal A. Kolkailah, Andrew J. Mcphate

Aerospace Engineering

Nonlinear analyses of structural components are normally carried out by finite element codes making Use of constitutive theories in which the material response is separated into the two important groups of phenomena known as rate‐dependent “creep” and rate‐independent “plasticity.” A number of viscoplastic constitutive theories in which creep and plasticity effects are combined into a unified plastic strain model have recently been proposed and are still undergoing active development. In this paper, the constitutive equations of the Bodner‐Partom model are used to present the time dependent, inelastic properties of Inconel 718 at 650 °C. This representation covers a wide range …

Integrating Scheduling And Control Functions In Computer Integrated Manufacturing Using Artificial Intelligence, Luis Carlos Rabelo, Sema E. Alptekin

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Proper integration of scheduling and control in Flexible Manufacturing Systems will make available the required level of decision-making capacity to provide a flexibly-automated, efficient, and quality manufacturing process. To achieve this level of integration, the developments in computer technology and sophisticated techniques of artificial intelligence (AI) should be applied to such FMS functions as scheduling. In this paper, we present an Intelligent Scheduling System for FMS under development that makes use of the integration of two AI technologies. These two AI technologies — Neural Networks and Expert Systems — provide the intelligence that the scheduling function requires in order to …

Using Living Materials To Intervene In The Natural Succession Process To Accelerate The Re-Development Of A Self-Sustaining Ecosystem That Has Been Damaged By Human Intervention, Eric Jorgensen

Materials Engineering

No abstract provided.

Group Set-Up For Printed Circuit Board Assembly, Tali F. Carmon, Oded Z. Maimon, Ezey M. Dar-El

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The current practice in the assembly of electronic components on printed circuit boards (PCBs) is serial production. a process characterized by very long set-up times. However, with the advent of efficient on-line process information .. new production control methods are now possible. This paper proposes a different production method, called the group set-up (GSU) method, which can significantly reduce set-up times. The traditional and the GSU production methods are compared, and it is shown that the GSU always performs better than the traditional method in terms of total production flow (throughput) and labour time However, the traditional method performs better …

The Role Of The Peripheral Vascular Bed In Arterial Pulse Wave Propagation, L. S. Baker, F. A. Anderson, Jr., H. B. Wheeler, William W. Durgin

Office of the Provost Scholarship

An analytical model was developed to simulate human arterial pulse wave propagation in major arteries. It was verified with an experimental model. The models investigated the effects of the peripheral vascular bed on pressure pulse morphology. The models revealed that the capillary bed in normal humans acts as a high resistance, low reflectance, boundary condition.

A Systematic Transition To Flexible Manufacturing, Sema E. Alptekin, Daniel L. Webber

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The transition from basic automation to flexible manufacturing is an expensive and tedious procedure. It requires meticulous planning and almost clairvoyant forecasting to insure that the initial flexibility obtained is sufficient to allow growth and expansion in the future. This paper will suggest a systematic and methodological approach to achieve optimal flexibility and describe the present results of its application to an ongoing system transformation. Conclusions based on existing levels of completion are presented along with identification of critical and non critical flexibility requirements. The considerations and steps taken are summarized in a procedural format which may then be applied …

A 100-Khz - 22 Ghz Instrumentation Photoreceiver, Dennis J. Derickson, C. M. Miller, R. L. Van Tuyl

Electrical Engineering

A photoreceiver consisting of a high-speed p-i-n photodetector and a 100-kHz to 22-GHz distributed amplifier is described. Photoreceiver calibration is accomplished by optical heterodyne techniques. The photoreceiver is used with a microwave spectrum analyzer to produce a fully amplitude-calibrated 22-GHz-bandwidth lightwave signal analyzer system for displaying intensity-modulated light with -65-dB (optical) sensitivity at 1300-nm and 1550-nm wavelengths.

Proposed Scheduling Methods For Printed Circuit Board Assembly, Tali Freed, Ezey M. Dar-El, Oded Z. Maimon

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The current practice in the assembly of electronic components on printed circuit boards (PCB's) is serial production, a process characterized by very long set-up times.

However. with the advent of efficient on-line process information, new production control methods are now possible. This paper proposes two new production methods - the Grouped Set-up (GSU) method and the Sequence-Dependent Scheduling (SDS) method, which can significantly reduce set-up times.

It is shown that the GSU always performs better than the SDS method in terms of total production flow (throughput). while the SDS performs better than the GSU method in terms of work-in-process (WIP) …

An Update To The Mitre/Wpi Space Shuttle Prgoram: Gascan G-408, Fred J. Looft, William W. Durgin

Office of the Provost Scholarship

The objective of the MITRE/WPI Space Shuttle Program was to develop a set of scientific meaningful experiments that could be flown in a Get Away Special Canister. currently, the first GASCAN is finished (G-408) and ready to be launched. The program has been so successful that the design and development of a second set of experiments has been started (G-533). This paper will describe and summarize both of these programs.

Low Cost Software, Harold M. Cota

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This is the fifth in our series on low cost software available to JAPCA readers. These programs have been developed by APCA members and are provided as a professional courtesy, as is, without warrantee. The authors would appreciate any feedback you have. In addition, we hope you will be willing to share programs you have developed for your own PC. To share your program all you need to do is prepare a brief description, similar to those in this column and send it with your program and any examples or documentations you are willing to furnish to: Dr. Hal Cota, …

Surabaya Indonesia: Options In Solid Waste Management, Samuel A. Vigil

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The Government of Indonesia requested assistance from the United States Trade and Development Program (TDP) regarding improvements to the solid waste management system of the City of Surabaya. TDP retained the author to prepare a Preliminary Feasibility Study which will enable TDP to make an informed decision on the desirability of funding further engineering work leading to solid waste projects.

The Use Of Ultrasound Imaging In The In-Vivo Determination Of Normal Human Arterial Compliance, Lauren I. Stratouly, Paul A. Cardullo, Frederick A. Anderson Jr., William W. Durgin, H. Brownell Wheeler

Office of the Provost Scholarship

Elastic properties of major arteries were measured in vivo in ten normal volunteers, age 26 to 44 years (mean = 32 years). A B-mode ultrasound imager was used to noninvasively measure mean diameter and pulsatile diameter change at five locations along the main arteries in the abdomen and the lower extremities. Together with pulsatile pressure (measured by the auscultatory method), strain (ε), compliance (C) and the pressure-strain elastic modulus (Ep l/C) were calculated. Ep increased significantly along the arterial tree; mean values (x10⁵ N/m^-2 ) were: 0.99 aorta, 1.21 common iliac artery (CIA), 1.43 common femoral artery (CFA), …

Microcomputer Model For Solid Waste Planning, Samuel A. Vigil, Jane A. Zevely, Roy Yeaman

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Tone Generation By Flow Past Deep Wall Cavities, D. D. Erickson, William W. Durgin

Office of the Provost Scholarship

Flow past deep wall cavities exhibits strong interaction with the standing wave system in the cavity. The shear layer separating the exterior flow from the cavity flow supports instabilities which excite the normal cavity modes. In turn, the cavity wave system reinforces the instabilities. Experimental studies have shown that two distinct instability modes are encountered as the external velocity is increased. The pressure coefficient versus Strouha1 number behavior reveals two maxima which correspond to different instability modes of the shear layer. Flow visualization studies have shown that these modes correspond to distinct shear 1ayer vortex structures. At high velocities, single …