Engineering Commons^™

Rapid, Diagnostic Test For Cardiac Ischemia, Jose Gonzales, Abdelmagid Nasreldeen, Emerson Physioc, Julio Contreras, Evan Thoresen

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Current methods to detect cardiac ischemia rely on biomarkers such as troponin. Elevated levels of troponin are observed hours after the cardiac event. There is an unmet need for rapid diagnostic tests for cardiac ischemia, which utilizes recently discovered biomarkers. A VCU patented assay for cardiac ischemia employs the use of chemiluminescence to detect metabolic byproducts of xanthine oxidase activity. These byproducts are detectable minutes after the cardiac event. Early diagnosis of and response to cardiac events is beneficial for clinical decision-making; therefore, a point-of-care device within the emergency health setting is sought. The CLSE 203 project team designed and …

Development Of A Tabletop Soft Gel Encapsulation Machine, Brigitte Ha, Emily Miller, Haya Rizvi

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Currently, to test new formulations of gel capsules at Pfizer, they must use the large-scale machine that requires a minimum of 25 kg of gel melt and produce hundreds of capsules per run. Production at a smaller scale to enable rapid changeover for research and development is desired. The team’s goal was to achieve continuous production of sealed capsules with 80% fill capacity. Capsule sealing was the prime consideration. Preliminary trials using the existing system and heat transfer analysis indicated localized heating was necessary to promote capsule sealing. To provide localized heating, a brass wedge was designed based on the …

Rapid Detection Of Nicotine In E-Liquids, Niraja Bohidar, Ryan Joiner, Benjamin Kirby

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Electronic cigarettes have gained popularity in recent years. Electronic cigarettes operate by vaporizing flavored solutions, called e-liquids, for inhalation by the user. No method is currently available for analysis of e-liquids in the field, making regulation of electronic cigarettes difficult and inefficient. Some regulatory issues related to e-liquids include mislabeling of e-liquids by providers to avoid taxes on nicotine, the sale of nicotine-containing e-liquids to minors, and the mixing of drugs of abuse into e-liquids. Regulatory and law enforcement agencies have a need for an accurate field test capable of analyzing e-liquids for nicotine. Proposed are two devices for the …

Vertical Take-Off And Landing Aircraft, Sophie Baldwin, Michael Pennie, Alex Roberts, Dov Szego

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The primary purpose of this project is to combine the benefits of both multi-copters and fixed-wing crafts, reducing the drawbacks of both. The explosion of small unmanned aerial systems (“UASs”), also called unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAV”) in recent years is the result of their versatility and practicality. It is invaluable for obvious reasons to be able to send a small, comparatively inexpensive, remotely controlled vehicle with a camera or a payload into places where either people cannot or would prefer not to go. Quadcopters have the advantage of being able to take off and land without significant runway space, but …

Finite Element Analysis Of A Friction Clutch System In An Automatic Transmission, Samuel Cook

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The purpose of this project is to develop a computational solution to the effects of certain variables present inside an automatic transmission, more specifically, the friction clutch system that enables and disables different gear-sets. Afton partnered with the School of Engineering looking for a time-sensitive, computational solution to serve as a valuable comparison to what exists at Afton’s disposal currently. The solution is a finite element analysis (FEA) simulation that transforms a real world device with many nuances and intricacies into a simplified model in a two dimensional test space. The challenge exists in keeping the simplified model accurate to …

3d Printed Ear Canal Model, Ahmad Ali, Rosheena Hairston, Hunter Locks

Capstone Design Expo Posters

A multi-material ear canal model was designed and created from CT scans of an actual patient. This ear canal model serves as a training model for trainees, surgeons and doctors to develop a better understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the ear by physically looking, touching and testing the model. The major task taken was to establish and identify the area of interest provided with the files of medical scans by using 3D Slicer. The files were then converted to a stereolithographic (STL) file where it was able to be edited for smoothing in programs such as Meshmixer or …

Radiotherapy Ergonomic Patient Positioning System, Anthony Briscoe Ii, Joseph Oliva, Yvette Smith, Darius Stuvaints

Capstone Design Expo Posters

External beam radiotherapy is a powerful tool to combat cancer, but requires precise positioning of patients. The standard practice involves patients lying on treatment tables within immobilization equipment. These systems have limited clearance between treatment sources and the patient that can be uncomfortable or claustrophobic for patients. Patients may move when uncomfortable, leading to improper dose delivery, possibly causing painful side effects or further cancers. We present an alternative, open configuration patient positioning solution for more ergonomic setup options with competitive positioning capabilities compared to conventional systems.

Our ergonomic positioning system consists of a seat for patients on a scissor …

Underwater Ant House, Mark Duggan, Zachary Ellis, Zachary Soulier

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The project seeks to design and test and submersible enclosure capable of sustaining oxygen breathing life. A mesh covered in a superhydrophobic coating can both restrain water up to a maximum pressure and retain a direct interface between air and water. Oxygen can transfer over this boundary if there is a sufficient difference in concentrations between the water and air.

Multiple designs have been produced with the intent of testing and demonstrating these theories. 3D printing allowed for quick and customizable production of every component. Enclosures were made for testing the maximum allowable pressure and to fit an oxygen sensor. …

Reducing Noise In Automatic Transmission, Connor Golden-Weathers, Riley Hall, Matthew Bosco, Felix Pyatigorskiy

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The efficiency of an automobile increases as its running torque increases. This is an avenue for improving fuel economy that is actively being pursued. However, transmissions running at higher torques produce an unacceptable amount of noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH). NVH occurs most visibly as a result of the vehicle’s friction clutch behavior. At present, machines capable of testing this behavior exist (MTM machine and LVFA rig) but are very expensive in terms of time, space, and production cost.

The goal of this project is to produce a cost-effective machine in which friction clutch behavior can be analyzed in a …

Media Mixing Apparatus, Nick Colt, Eric Depew, Kurt Thoele, Chris Ward

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The purpose of this project is to reduce the physical exertion and radiological exposure of the maintenance worker by reducing mixing time of water and resin beads when replacing resin beads in a shipboard tank. Presently, a maintenance worker empties ⅓ cubic foot of resin media into a bucket, and fills the bucket with about 1-⅓ gallons of water. Then the water and resin media is mixed with a paddle by hand, until it appears homogeneous, creating a slurry. The slurry is dumped into a funnel after the mixing process and introduced to the system after the discharge valve is …

Unattended Underground Energy Harvesting Sensor, Jeffrey Buck, Tzshay Wade, Jaeton Foxley, Brandon Ruffin

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The team designed an underground energy harvesting sensor that utilizes the ambient energy from its surroundings to provide low power telecommunications to a remote host. The scope of this project is to analyze the feasibility of such system and explore the capabilities of available energy harvesting techniques that utilize the environment, feasibility of operation, and creating a design. Some of the most common methods that have been proven to function on certain environments are thermoelectric and solar energy. Thermoelectricity uses a temperature gradient and solar uses the energy of the sun. To provide a remote vibration signal an accelerometer was …

Explosion Damping Device (Blast Shield), Cullen Bade, Juwan Cephas, Raymond Long

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The proposed device has the main goal to protect a vehicle and personal inside the vehicle in the event of an explosion from underneath of a Humvee most likely caused by an IED explosion. The constraints were that the vehicle could not be lifted too far off the ground to increase the chance the vehicle rollover; the design should not block accessibility to the passengers; be versatile in order to help fit different model vehicles; and most important be able to help in deflecting the blast away from the vehicle. The final design consisted on a V-shaped blast shield similar …

3d Printed Sports Mouthguard, Abdullah Mohsen, Abdulrahman Alharshani

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The 3D printed sports mouthguard can be specifically designed to provide exceptional protection and comfort to athletes in any sport. The process by which an athlete undergoes for obtaining their mouthguard requires a substantial amount of time and cost. Introducing 3D printer capabilities into the dental and sporting fields would elicit faster manufacturing time with more economically priced materials.

In testing our theory, the initial components of the research consisted of scanning a dental impression cast and transferring the S.T.L. file scan onto the C.A.D. software. The next important step required us to discover which material to wire with the …

Anthem Sustainability Project, James Askegren, David Coleman, Luis Morgan

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Data centers are multiplying in number and size as electronic business, communication, collaboration, and recreation continue to increase in popularity. A large amount of electrical power consumed by data center computing equipment is converted to heat, requiring dedicated cooling systems 24 hours a day. Some data center operators have begun taking advantage of this heat instead of expelling it to the atmosphere. This approach not only reduces the electricity costs of these facilities but also minimizes the environmental impact they generate. Anthem has a 2.5 MW data center for which they would like to develop an air-to-air thermal recycle method. …

Iec Fusor Mobile Shielding Unit, Dominic Balducci, John Lawson, Bryce Mcdaniels, Robert Rodi, William Simmons

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The VCU Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) Fusor Senior Design Project provides Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with a mobile fusor complete with the necessary shielding to protect operators as well as the general public from potentially hazardous radiation. The VCU IEC fusor is a Farnsworth-Hirsch type reactor, and consists of five basic components; a high voltage power supply, vacuum system, gas regulation system, primary reactor vessel assembly, and radiation shielding. These components were serviced and reassembled on a customized mobile cart. In addition to these components, a specimen holder and viewing monitor were added to the design. The specimen holder provides …

Formula Sae Intake System, Esa Mahmood, Arman Sarwar, Michael R. Smith

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The Formula SAE Intake System is intended to optimize the airflow into a restricted 600cc engine. The intake system is designed, fabricated, and installed in accordance with the FSAE rule book with a focus on maximizing the vehicle’s acceleration. It is directly responsible for determining the drivability of the car and how much horsepower the flow restricted engine produces.

Design of the intake was conceptualized based on researching a number of factors including venturi diffusion angles, plenum volumes, and runner lengths. Initial tests were performed utilizing computational fluid dynamics for a total of 367 flow simulations and 261 running hours …

Design And Prototype Of Next Generation Nascar Brake Caliper, Jesse Crowder, John Knighton, Lenny Ports, Miranda Snyder

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Efficient braking is pivotal to the success of a NASCAR team. Braking occurs when the brake pedal is depressed, causing hydraulic pressure within the caliper housing and on the pistons, which forces the pistons to push the brake pads against the rotors reducing the vehicle’s speed due to the high friction between the pads and rotors. High performance brake calipers are arguably one of the most crucial components of a race car braking system. Short track brake calipers were designed to efficiently decelerate vehicles traveling upwards of one-hundred twenty miles per hour. This is an essential function of vehicles on …

Enhanced Dynamometer For Conducting Long-Term Brake Wear Testing, Grant Adams, Andres Alvarez Del Piño, Casey Greenstreet, Matthew Wall

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The purpose of this project is to develop an automated control system for two constant torque dynamometers Krauss Friction Tester Type RWS60A – Serial no. 080 built in Orangeburg, West Germany recently obtained by FDP Friction Science. This control system will be efficient, effective, safer, and meet the standards of modern day technologies. Currently, the machines are outdated, obsolete, and unable to operate. Therefore, to bring the dynamometers back into full operation and be competitive in today’s industry a new control system that meets industry expectations must be implemented. For this reason, a programmable logic controller from Automationdirect named ClickPLC …

Alternative Method For Posterior Lumbar Discectomy And Development Of Associated Bench Top Test, Alfred Levinson, Parth Patel, Rahul Peddi, Sarah Peters, Jon Willard

Capstone Design Expo Posters

A discectomy is a common surgical procedure performed to remove the fibrous disc material between adjacent vertebrae in the spine, known as vertebral disc. Current methods and tools used in discectomies are time consuming and potentially dangerous, with opportunity for human error. There is a need for a new method of disc removal that can improve clinical results by reducing surgical times, preventing damage to surrounding anatomy, and more thoroughly removing the vertebral disc. A reduction in surgery times and increase of effective disc removal will help to increase success, recovery, and spinal fusion rates. This project aims to provide …

Assistant Suite, Dale Greene, John Pham, Ritvik Nag

Capstone Design Expo Posters

This project was conducted to demonstrate a voice-to-mechanical application from one source to multiple platforms with the use of hardware-to-software technology. The main platforms that are used for implementation is an Amazon Echo Dot, which serves as the voice interceptor to transcribe speech through integrated software hosted within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud network, and a Raspberry Pi microcontroller, which serves as the device which controlled mechanical movements based on what is transcribed from the Echo. The user can speak a command into the Echo to control the movement of one of two RC cars without any physical engagement. …

Plant Process Emulator, Ben Horstmann, Krista Wood, David Adu-Mensah, Felix Baffoe-Ofori

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The purpose of this project is to provide the VCU Engineering Students with a training system to simulate the use of Industrial Automation systems. Students need a wide variety of training systems to adequately train and improve their knowledge of all the fundamentals of PLC systems. There are multiple companies that sell a very expensive training setup that can teach students about Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control systems and mechanical systems but those systems cost too much (~$20,000+) for a small university or trade school to fund. The training system that was built provides the student with real world control and monitoring …

Collaborative Collective Algorithms To Coordinate Ugvs, Kyle Archuleta, Christopher Lucas, Brian Richardson, Michael Stewart

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Sentel/Brilliant Innovations has developed autonomous UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles) capable of generating a map of an unknown location through exploration using local software and the power of Google Tango technology. This project was tasked with developing an efficient and capable map-stitching solution allowing multiple UGVs to coordinate their movements and share information in order to greatly improve the speed at which these drones can be used to generate maps. The solution utilizes the processing power of a Raspberry Pi to pull maps from a Redis server and stitch them together. Once stitched, the maps are redistributed via the Redis server …

Fdp – Vcu Data Acquisition Device, Ferdinand Agyei-Yeboah, Tommy Huynh, Charles Nimo, Thomas Oakley

Capstone Design Expo Posters

There is a need to monitor critical information during brake testing to obtain feedback and, ultimately, more insight on the brake performance of a vehicle. Currently, much of the data logging equipment required for testing is very specialized and consequently expensive. Additionally, automotive test vehicles apply older technology that is often not integrated with data analytics for calibrating stopping distance, number of stops, deceleration, and brake squeal. Presently, drivers fill out forms describing issues with brakes.

Our team generated a device for FDP Brakes that monitors brake pad temperature, brake line pressure, and GPS location and speed of a test …

Low Cost And Durable Perovskite Solar Cells, Jack Carli, Kapil Marahatta, Feras Kakish, Jason Mcaleese

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Perovskite solar cells offer an alternative approach to photovoltaic solar power generation versus traditional silicon solar cells, by rivaling their efficiency at potentially less than half the cost. Perovskite’s name comes from the crystal structure that encompasses the active layer (Methylammonium Lead Iodide – CH₃NH₃PbI₃), the region that absorbs photons and generates electrical energy by creating electron hole pairs. The presence of the organic cation (methylammonium) causes degradation of the active layer under humidity, UV light, and high temperature, which lowers the effectiveness of the cells. This project investigates low-cost routes and materials for …

Applied Industrial Augmented Reality, Eric Brown, Riley Hanson, Casey White

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The goal of our project was to create an application that demonstrates the usefulness of augmented reality within an industrial context. In order to align our project goals with those of our sponsor, Newport News Shipbuilding, we created an augmented reality application to supplement a chainsaw’s instruction manual. Using an instruction manual for a Stihl MS361 chainsaw, we adapted the material into a digital context. In the application, we included step-by-step instructions for starting the chainsaw and changing the chain. In addition, we included an augmented part identification mode, where the user can identify parts of the chainsaw by touching …

Digital Analysis Of Heartbeats From Remote Machines, Dewey Mitchem, Devin Dulay, Taylor Kaplan

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The “Bring Out Your Exceptions” project is a robust online automated data collection and aggregation utility. Specifically designed to handle application to application communication so that system health analysis can be performed easily within minutes by both trained and untrained personnel. The utility, once set-up, receives relevant data (be it crash errors or current system health) from remote systems without human interaction being required. This will allow for faster turn-around on patch development and addressing future errors without reliance on a client requesting help.

Created using a combination of tools and languages such as Javascript, GoLang, Node.JS, RabbitMQ, and MongoDB, …

Martin Agency Freelancer Onboarding, Brian Simoni, Christopher Calhoun, Perry Stephenson

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Onboarding new employees is a necessary but often a lengthy process at any company, but it can be especially challenging for companies like The Martin Agency. An advertising firm based in Richmond, Virginia. The nature of their work channels the need for many of their employees to be freelancers or short term contractors. At the time the project began, the process to request a new freelancer would start as a paper form submitted by a department supervisor. It would then require approval from members of different departments within agency, and the data had to be converted into an electronic form …

Vcu Pathfinder, Chris Carpenter, Christian Merk, Syed Shahriyar

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Imagine this, you are planning to enroll in an institution of higher learning. However, your schedule can't possibly match your institutions recommended path. Maybe you're transferring from a different institution, maybe you just picked up additional hours on the job, or maybe you just want to change to a different major. Getting all the information you need in one place to plan a personalized schedule can be a difficult proposition, especially if you don't have easy access to an on-site adviser. VCU Pathfinder is here to make this process considerably less stressful and more efficient. Pathfinder is a schedule assistance …

Automatic Parking Application, Corey Gates, Huy Nguyen, John Steiner

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The purpose of this utility application is to automatically remind the users where their vehicle is parked. Using many sensors and features of the Apple iPhone, we can track changes in users’ behaviors and their surrounding such as air pressure, physical movement, connection proximity, and coordinate position. These allow for detecting not just the parking position, but also altitude and interior approximation within parking structures. Using a periodic assessment loop, this application silently waits for changes, remaining out of sight of common user activity. During an assessment, nearby connections, user position, and activity readings are evaluated. If a significant event, …

Droidnet: An Android Application Security Framework Through Crowdsourcing, Pulkit Rustgi, Bilal Ahmed, Mansi Shah

Capstone Design Expo Posters

In the current Android architecture, users have to decide whether an app is safe to use or not by themselves. Savvy users can make correct decisions to avoid unnecessary privacy breaches, however most users are not capable or do not care to make impactful decisions. To assist those users, we propose DroidNet, an Android permission control framework based on crowdsourcing. In this framework, DroidNet runs new apps and their permissions initially, and then collects data based on each individual user’s settings in regards to each permission unique to every installed app. After collecting each user’s data, DroidNet provides recommendations on …