Engineering Commons^™

A97 Electrostatic Precipitator (Esp) Waste Elimination, Brian Acosta, Alyssa Young, Austin Straw

Scholar Week 2016 - present

This project focuses on the development of a waste elimination system. the Kankakee BASF site produces a waste known as acid ester waste through their air pollution system in area 97; this waste is highly corrosive and is causing damage to their process sewer. A waste elimination system had to be developed in order to remove the acid ester was from the process sewer without compromising the operation of the BASF Kankakee site.

Sae Baja Suspension Optimization, Jarrod Lesage, Jonah Trank, Tyler Fisher

Scholar Week 2016 - present

For our senior design project, we were all assigned to the Baja Suspension Team. This year our goal, as given to us by our sponsor Dr. Bob Allen, is to optimize the current suspension that is already on our vehicle. This includes the tire psi, shock psi, brake testing, camber, and toe. It is also our job as a team to oversee the Baja Team as a whole and besides the drivetrain, to make sure the whole car is ready for competition in May. This includes following the 2020 Baja SAE rulebook.

Olivet Nazarene University Ward Field Parking Garage, Eric Everley, Micah Rodriguez, Joel Hasselbring, Robert W. Rienow

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Over past years, Olivet Nazarene University has grown a tremendous amount. Including the construction of new buildings and the increasing population of faculty and students, this growth has created a need for more parking space. In this past semester our team has been working to design a solution to this issue. We have decided to design a three-story parking garage spanning the entire parking lot east of Centennial Chapel. This parking garage will include approximately 800 additional parking spaces and will include a commuter lounge and locker rooms for the Olivet Nazarene football team. The additional parking spaces will provide …

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

Scholar Week 2016 - present

The Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) has been identified as a promising candidate to replace aging nuclear reactors around the world. However, a suitable combination of molten salt and container material needs to be found in order to reduce the potential for corrosion in the MSR before it can be considered commercially viable. FLiNaK molten salt and the nickel-based alloy Hastelloy N have been identified as prime candidates for this function, but the severity of FLiNaK corrosion in Hastelloy N requires additional study before this combination can be used in the operation of a MSR. In this study, Hastelloy N samples …

Evaluating The Scalability Of Graphene Synthesis, Evan Dexter

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Graphene is a new material, first isolated in 2004, consisting 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 a great amount of current research going into the development of manufacturing techniques of the material. I conducted experiments to …

Using Principle Component Analysis To Analyze Tertiary And Quaternary Spectral Mixtures, David Burnett

Scholar Week 2016 - present

CRISM images from Mars are expected to contain carbonates such as magnesite. Prior research has been successfully able to determine the approximate percent composition of phyllosilicates in binary lab mixtures using Principle Component Analysis (PCA). In order to expand this model to work on CRISM images, one of preliminary steps is allowing the algorithm to work on mixtures with more than two components, which was the primary purpose of this research.

Generating Spectra Using Pca-Based Spectral Mixture Models, Joseph S. Makarewicz, Heather D. Makarewicz

Scholar Week 2016 - present

PCA-based spectra mixture models have been created for several laboratory mixture data sets. This presentation provides examples of spectra that were generated using PCA-based spectra mixture models.

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

Scholar Week 2016 - present

This paper highlights a new type of modified heat pipe assisted thermoelectric generator system for automobile exhaust waste heat recovery. This system employs the use of metal foam as a heat transfer aid to increase the thermal energy transferred through the system. In this system, heat pipes are inserted into a metal foam block that is exposed to the exhaust gas stream. The metal foam increases heat transfer in a similar way that fins increase heat transfer. To confirm that this system provides a greater conversion of thermal energy, an experimental prototype was built and tested. Tests were conducted with …

Additive Manufacturing Of High Solids Loading Hybrid Rocket Fuel Grains, Stephen P. Johnson

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Hybrid rocket motors offer many of the benefits of both liquid and solid rocket systems. Like liquid engines, hybrid rocket motors are able to be throttled, can be stopped and restarted, and are safer than solid rocket motors since the fuel and oxidizer are in different physical states. Hybrid rocket motors are similar to solid motors in that they are relatively simple and have a high density-specific impulse. One of the major drawbacks of hybrid rocket motors is a slower burning rate than solid rocket motors. Complex port geometries provide greater burning surface area to compensate for lower burning rates …

Vocal Processing With Spectral Analysis, Brad Fitzgerald

Scholar Week 2016 - present

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 in order to create a projection matrix which could be used by an algorithm to identify the source of an unknown recording from one of the 30 speakers. Two different identification algorithms were tested, both of which were generally unable to correctly identify the source of a single vocal …

Spectral Mixture Modeling Using Principle Component Analysis, Joseph S. Makarewicz, Heather D. Makarewicz

Scholar Week 2016 - present

A method for modeling mixtures between two end-member spectra using principle component analysis and linear regression was presented. The presentation included results from three binary mixture data sets including orthopyroxene-clinopyroxene, kaolinite-montmorillonite, and nontronite-ferrihydrite.

Design And Evaluation Of 3d-Printed Filar Micrometer, Emily Rull

Scholar Week 2016 - present

This project sought to design and 3D-print a filar micrometer for double star measurements that amateur astronomers could produce cost effectively.

Double stars are celestial objects that allow the mass of stars to be calculated 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. As a result of 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. This allows amateur astronomers to pick up where professionals have left …

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

Scholar Week 2016 - present

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 approved for commercial use. This paper proposes a weed and crop discrimination algorithm that utilizes an excessive green color filter paired with principal component analysis to detect spatial frequencies within an image corresponding to different types of weeds and …