Engineering Commons^™

Autonomous Ground Photographer, Sylvia Tan, Nicholas C. Smith, Kate Padilla, Elise Ashley

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Dr. Penczykowski, a biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, researches the effects of powdery mildew on three plant species. Her lab currently collects data in the field by manually counting the number of infected plants with the assistance of a simple PVC grid. Therefore, this projects aims to automate this process by capturing images that can then be processed in her lab after.

Group T Asme Design Challenge Project, Thomas Orgielewicz, Hayden Von Hoffmann, Michael Chirumbole

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design and build a RC Robot eligible to compete in the 2019 ASME Challenge, the "Pick-and-Place Race"

Tendon Rehabilitator, David Ricks, Lucas Parisot, Benjamin Wang

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Our goal was to provide a cheap, portable and easy way for those suffering from medial epicondylitis tendinosis, or golfers elbow, to perform rehabbing exercises.

Group O - Lacrosse Ball Passer, Mackenzie Gordon, Jake Mennemeier, Conor Pellas

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of our design group was to make a lacrosse ball passer that could be used in a team practice or individual setting. Wayne Jaekle, WashU’s head lacrosse coach defined major customer needs as producing a consistent pass speed and angle, an interactive interface allowing an automatic time interval between passes, and being easy to load. These needs lead to our main design goals: 1. A ball capacity of 30, 2. A minimum pass speed of 30 mph, and 3. A 5 second time interval between passes. Mock ups and brainstorming exercises led to our team’s selection of a …

Asme Design Competition - Group H, Melanie Self, Ben Tattersfield, Joshua Emde

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This document presents our solution for the ASME pick-and-place design competition. In brief, the challenge is to collect balls from an arena and return them to a ‘home base’. The specifics of the competition are elaborated on within. The document walks through the design decisions that went into the prototype; the Goalkeeper concept that we ultimately landed on best solved the problems presented by the challenge statement as interpreted by our customer, Dr. James Jackson Potter. Several of the design choices were made by applying mathematical relationships, with the math and results included to illuminate our methods. We include a …

Anisotropic Tissue Maker, Jake Ireland, Jaryd Huffman, Sarah Mohrmann, Daniel Cano

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common injury that is not thoroughly understood. Data on brain mechanics and motion are not abundant during the time of impact. In order to accumulate more data and achieve a better understanding of how the injury occurs tissue mimics can be made.

T-Shirt Square Cutter, Austin Chawgo, Kendall Weishaar, Samir Lopez

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Each year, Americans waste millions of pounds of textiles in the form of clothing that is thrown away. Professor Mary Ruppert-Stroescu from the Sam Fox School of Design seeks to combat this by reusing the old fabric from discarded clothes and creating new, fashionable clothing. To do this, her and her students cut up donated shirts into small squares, by hand, using scissors and fabric cutters and sew them together using a method developed by her.. This process is very time consuming and limits the commercial viability of this process. The T-shirt Cutter design, detailed below, has the potential to …

Residential Automatic Door Opener, Steven Downs, Ardian Pollo, Ethan Bredemeier

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This project proposes an innovative design for an automatic door opener intended for external doors of residential homes. The intended customers are elderly and disabled people who may benefit from such a device while entering and exiting their homes. The goal is to create an affordable product to compete with existing products that are relatively expensive to make such devices more accessible.

Universal Tube Fixture, Griffin Kivitz, Matthew Whitehill, Jason Hsu

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of this design project was to create a device that can aid in the assembly of glue joints between concentric tubes. In many medical devices, whether they be laser probes, retractable injectors, or other devices with actuating parts, there are often concentric glue joints. The problem we are trying to solve is controlling where the 2 tubes are relative to one another when they are glued.

Lacrosse Ball Passing Machine, William Galik, Daniel Finer, Matt Jenkins

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design and build a lacrosse ball passing machine that utilizes an automated ball sorting mechanism to shoot balls up to 60 mph with 80 percent accuracy at a 1 square yard target.

Arliss Competition Canister Vehicle, Jessie Goldberg, Nicholas Cornejo, Tyler Smith, Rachel Kershner

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

For our project, we designed a canister vehicle that fits the design specifications of the ARLISS competition. For the ARLISS competition, the vehicles are loaded into a rocket, launched approximately 10,000 feet into the air, released, and then must autonomously navigate to a predetermined target on the ground. Because of our time restraint, we are focused on designing a vehicle of the correct dimensions (a maximum mass of 1050g, a maximum diameter of 146mm, and a maximum height of 240mm) that can simply travel on the ground over multiple types of terrain. Additionally, we designed a parachute release mechanism so …

Decoupling Information And Connectivity Via Information-Centric Transport, Hila Ben Abraham, Jyoti Parwatikar, John Dehart, Adam Drescher, Patrick Crowley

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Research

The power of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) architectures lies in their abstraction for communication --- the request for named data. This abstraction promises that applications can choose to operate only in the information plane, agnostic to the mechanisms implemented in the connectivity plane. However, despite this powerful promise, the information and connectivity planes are presently coupled in today's incarnations of leading ICNs by a core architectural component, the forwarding strategy. Presently, this component is not sustainable: it implements both the information and connectivity mechanisms without specifying who should choose a forwarding strategy --- an application developer or the network operator. In …

Synthesis Of Crumpled Graphene And Titanium Dioxide Based–Nanomaterials And The Application To Carbon Dioxide Photoreduction, Yao Nie

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

With the rapid development of the economy, increasing combustion of fossils fuels has caused an increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) level, and has led to global climate change. As a mitigation approach, CO2 capture and conversion (CCC) can not only capture CO2, but also convert it to useable products, such as hydrocarbon fuels. Photocatalytic reduction is an attractive CCC option that directly harnesses inexpensive and abundant solar energy. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a widely used semiconductor for photocatalysis, and graphene nanosheets are a promising material for use in fabricating graphene-TiO2 hybridized photocatalysts. To realize the application of these …

Development And Application Of Rotation And Curvature Correction To Wray-Agarwal Turbulence Model, Xiao Zhang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is increasingly playing a significant role in the analysis and design of aircrafts, turbomachines, automobiles, and in many other industrial applications. In majority of the applications, the fluid flow is generally turbulent. The accurate prediction of turbulent flows to date remains a challenging problem in CFD. In almost all industrial applications, Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations in conjunction with a turbulence model are employed for simulation and prediction of turbulent flows. Currently the one-equation (namely the Spalart-Allmaras (SA) and Wray-Agarwal (WA) and two-equation (namely the k-ε and Shear Stress Transport k-ω) turbulence models remain the most widely …

Mathematical Models Of Innate Immune Cell Signaling Networks Using Protein Phosphorylation Patterns, Allison Anne Throm

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Immune dysregulation has been implicated in pediatric autoimmune disease

pathogenesis, but the underlying mechanisms still remain poorly understood. We explored

immune cell signaling dysregulation in two different pediatric autoimmune diseases:

polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), a disease characterized by pain, swelling, and

limited range of motion in five or more joints and juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM), a disease

characterized by pathognomonic skin rashes and proximal muscle weakness. Both polyarticular

JIA and JDM can be controlled with newer biologic medications, but a substantial fraction of

patients still experiences refractory disease courses. To explore potential immune cell signaling

dysregulation, mass cytometry was performed …

Exploring Fatty Acid Metabolism For The Biosynthesis Of Non-Natural Chemicals, Wen Jiang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The global energy crisis and increasing environmental concerns have spurred the sustainable production of biofuels and other fossil-fuel-derived chemicals. One approach is to engineer microbial metabolic pathways to convert renewable feedstocks (e.g. lignocellulosic biomass) to compounds that have structures similar to those of petroleum-derived fuels and chemicals. The microbial fatty acid (FA) biosynthetic pathway is attractive because FAs are common precursors that can be converted to several types of chemicals, including alkanes, alkenes, alcohols, and esters. These chemicals have numerous applications as fuels, fragrances, emollients, plasticizers, thickeners, and detergents. Most work has used Escherichia coli as the microbial host due …

Development And Evaluation Of Biocompatible Engineered Nanoparticles For Use In Ophthalmology, Bedia Begum Karakocak

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The synthesis and design of biocompatible nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery and bioimaging requires knowledge of both their potential toxicity and their transport. For both practical and ethical reasons, evaluating exposure via cell studies is a logical precursor to in vivo tests. As a step towards clinical trials, this work extensively investigated the toxicity of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) and carbon dot (CD) nanoparticles as a prelude to their in vivo application, focusing specifically on ocular cells. As a further step, it also evaluated their whole-body transport in mice. The research pursued two approaches in assessing the toxicity of engineered …

Developing Multi-Scale Models For Water Quality Management In Drinking Water Distribution Systems, Ahmed A. Abokifa

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Drinking water supply systems belong to the group of critical infrastructure systems that support the socioeconomic development of our modern societies. In addition, drinking water infrastructure plays a key role in the protection of public health by providing a common access to clean and safe water for all our municipal, industrial, and firefighting purposes. Yet, in the United States, much of our national water infrastructure is now approaching the end of its useful life while investments in its replacement and rehabilitation have been consistently inadequate. Furthermore, the aging water infrastructure has often been operated empirically, and the embracement of modern …

Radiological Pathological Correlations In Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, Mihika Gangolli

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that has been increasingly linked to traumatic brain injury. The neuropathology that distinguishes CTE from other tauopathies includes hyperphosphorylated tau (pTau) tangles and tau positive astrocytes irregularly distributed in cortical sulcal depths and clustered around perivascular foci. These features are clearly identified using immunohistochemistry, but are undetectable to current clinical imaging methods. Diffusion imaging has been proposed as a noninvasive method to detect the pathognomonic lesion of CTE in vivo because of its high sensitivity to microstructural alterations in tissue structure. While several diffusion imaging approaches, ranging from diffusion tensor imaging …

In Vivo Vascular Imaging With Photoacoustic Microscopy, Hsun-Chia Hsu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Photoacoustic (PA) tomography (PAT) has received extensive attention in the last decade for its capability to provide label-free structural and functional imaging in biological tissue with highly scalable spatial resolution and penetration depth. Compared to modern optical modalities, PAT offers speckle-free images and is more sensitive to optical absorption contrast (with 100% relative sensitivity). By implementing different regimes of optical wavelength, PAT can be used to image diverse light-absorbing biomolecules. For example, hemoglobin is of particular interest in the visible wavelength regime owing to its dominant absorption, and lipids and water are more commonly studied in the near-infrared regime.

In …

Engineering Robust And Programmable Biological Systems, Tatenda Shopera

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The ability to engineer programmable biological systems using complex artificial gene networks has great potential to unlock important innovative solutions to many biotechnological challenges. While cells have been engineered to implement complex information processing algorithms and to produce food, materials, and pharmaceuticals, many innovative applications are yet to be realized due to our poor understanding of how robust, reliable, and predictable artificial gene circuits are built. In this work, we demonstrate that robust complex cellular behaviors (e.g., bistability and gene expression dynamics) can be achieved by engineering gene regulatory architecture and increasing the complexity of genetic networks. We further demonstrate …

Brain-Computer Interfaces Using Electrocorticography And Surface Stimulation, Jesse Wheeler

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The brain connects to, modulates, and receives information from every organ in the body. As such, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have vast potential for diagnostics, medical therapies, and even augmentation or enhancement of normal functions. BCIs provide a means to explore the furthest corners of what it means to think, to feel, and to act—to experience the world and to be who you are. This work focuses on the development of a chronic bi-directional BCI for sensorimotor restoration through the use of separable frequency bands for recording motor intent and providing sensory feedback via electrocortical stimulation. Epidural cortical surface electrodes are …

Hemodynamic Effects On Embryonic Arterial Growth And Matrix Remodeling, Maria Gabriela Espinosa

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Hemodynamic forces drive cardiovascular morphogenesis and remodeling in the developing embryo. Changes to the embryonic hemodynamic environment have been shown to induce a variety of congenital heart defects, but little attention has been given to vasculature-specific defects. Although vascular development has been widely studied in the context of genetics and molecular biology, this work investigates the impact of hemodynamic forces on arterial development and mechanics.

The dorsal aorta (DA) is the first intraembryonic vessel to form. Its passive mechanical properties are determined by the deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, a hallmark of arterial maturation. We hypothesized that hemodynamic changes …

Bio-Inspired Multi-Spectral Image Sensor And Augmented Reality Display For Near-Infrared Fluorescence Image-Guided Surgery, Nan Cui

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Background: Cancer remains a major public health problem worldwide and poses a huge economic burden. Near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence image-guided surgery (IGS) utilizes molecular markers and imaging instruments to identify and locate tumors during surgical resection. Unfortunately, current state-of-the-art NIR fluorescence imaging systems are bulky, costly, and lack both fluorescence sensitivity under surgical illumination and co-registration accuracy between multimodal images. Additionally, the monitor-based display units are disruptive to the surgical workflow and are suboptimal at indicating the 3-dimensional position of labeled tumors. These major obstacles have prevented the wide acceptance of NIR fluorescence imaging as the standard of care for cancer …

Multi-Gpu Acceleration Of Iterative X-Ray Ct Image Reconstruction, Ayan Mitra

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

X-ray computed tomography is a widely used medical imaging modality for screening and diagnosing diseases and for image-guided radiation therapy treatment planning. Statistical iterative reconstruction (SIR) algorithms have the potential to significantly reduce image artifacts by minimizing a cost function that models the physics and statistics of the data acquisition process in X-ray CT. SIR algorithms have superior performance compared to traditional analytical reconstructions for a wide range of applications including nonstandard geometries arising from irregular sampling, limited angular range, missing data, and low-dose CT. The main hurdle for the widespread adoption of SIR algorithms in multislice X-ray CT reconstruction …

Forward Electrophysiological Modeling And Inverse Problem For Uterine Contractions During Pregnancy, Mengxue Zhang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Uterine contractile dysfunction during pregnancy is a significant healthcare challenge that imposes heavy medical and financial burdens on both human beings and society. In the U.S., about 12% of babies are born prematurely each year, which is a leading cause of neonatal mortality and increases the possibility of having subsequent health problems. Post-term birth, in which a baby is born after 42 weeks of gestation, can cause risks for both the newborn and the mother. Currently, there is a limited understanding of how the uterus transitions from quiescence to excitation, which hampers our ability to detect labor and treat major …

Robust Engineering Of Dynamic Structures In Complex Networks, Walter Botongo Bomela

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Populations of nearly identical dynamical systems are ubiquitous in natural and engineered systems, in which each unit plays a crucial role in determining the functioning of the ensemble. Robust and optimal control of such large collections of dynamical units remains a grand challenge, especially, when these units interact and form a complex network. Motivated by compelling practical problems in power systems, neural engineering and quantum control, where individual units often have to work in tandem to achieve a desired dynamic behavior, e.g., maintaining synchronization of generators in a power grid or conveying information in a neuronal network; in this dissertation, …

Controlling The Oxygen Microenvironment: The Role Of Hif-1Α In Early Tumor Progression, Sandra Lam

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Cancer drug efficacy has remained a critical obstacle for researchers as it has one of the lowest probabilities of success compared to other diseases. One method to help improve this success rate is to create better tumor models on which to perform the drug testing. With growing interesting in microphysiological systems, scientists can create more advanced in vitro models of human organ systems as well as diseased states. These “organ-on-a-chip” platforms aim to improve drug response prediction for both efficacy and toxicity. One underappreciated characteristic of many disease states is that they are often at a lower oxygen tension that …

Aromatic Tolerance And Utilization Mechanisms Of Rhodococcus Opacus Pd630 To Produce Value-Added Products From Lignin, Wiliam Henson

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Lignocellulosic biomass is a potential renewable feedstock for the microbial production of fuels and chemicals. For microbial utilization, lignocellulosic biomass must undergo pretreatment (e.g., thermochemical and enzymatic processing) to release fermentable sugars.

Lignin comprises ~15-30% of lignocellulosic biomass, and lignin-derived aromatic compounds released during pretreatment can inhibit the microbial conversion of lignocellulosic sugars to bioproducts. Additionally, cost-effective separation of lignin and lignin by-products from lignocellulosic sugars remains a challenge, and current processes generate large waste streams that are typically burned or discarded. Thus, efforts are underway to improve microbial tolerance to lignin by-products and to develop approaches for valorizing waste …

Noninvasive Multi-Modality Studies Of Cardiac Electrophysiology, Mechanics, And Anatomical Substrate In Healthy Adults, Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy, And Heart Failure, Christopher Andrews

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Heart disease is a leading cause of death and disability and is a major contributor to healthcare costs. Many forms of heart disease are caused by abnormalities in the electrical function of heart muscle cells or the cardiac conduction system. Electrocardiographic Imaging (ECGI) is a noninvasive modality for imaging cardiac electrophysiology. By combining recordings of the voltage distribution on the torso surface with anatomical images of the heart-torso geometry, ECGI reconstructs voltages on the epicardium. This thesis applies ECGI to novel studies of human heart function and disease and explores new combinations of ECGI with additional imaging modalities.

ECGI was …