Engineering Commons^™

Development Of A Fish Robot Equipped With Novel 3d-Printed Soft Bending Actuators, Steven Steele, Jorge Diaz Rodriguez, Sharun Sripathy, Turaj Ashuri, Saleh Gharaie, Yusun Chang, Amir Ali Amiri Moghadam

Symposium of Student Scholars

This paper reports on design and fabrication of a novel soft fish robot. Application of soft actuators for the fish tail will generates continuum bending motion which resembles the natural motion of the fish. However, most soft actuator mechanisms are complex and have low efficiency. Thus, to address this issue we have developed a 3D printed soft bending actuator which can be actuated with an electromotor. The basic design idea of the soft bending actuator is explained, and iteration of the design showed to create the desired motion for the soft tail. The soft actuator has been successfully integrated with …

The Effect Of Mental Demand On Body Postures, Rodrick Adams, Valentina Niño

Symposium of Student Scholars

How we perceive our work has a profound relationship with how our body reacts to help facilitate the performance of our tasks. This is an observational study of the experiment in which participants performed tasks under four different conditions (baseline, interruptions, time, and alarm) and used NASA-TLX (NASA- Task Load Index) scores to assess their mental workload for each condition across six dimensions: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, effort, performance, and frustration level. We juxtaposed their NASA-TLX score with corresponding REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment) scores while standing and RULA (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment) scores while sitting to determine …

Molecular Dynamics Study For Tritium Adsorption On Novel Materials, Jason Viscardi, Benjamin Robinson, Asher Flanagan

Symposium of Student Scholars

In this study, novel materials will be researched, and their potential uses for tritium control. 12 studies have been collected on various materials that give a solid foundation for future research that will be conducted regarding tritium control. All these studies used molecular dynamics simulation (MDS) to generate results. The first paper found from a university in Crete, Greece discussed pillared graphene to store hydrogen in a novel 3D carbon nanostructure in which pore size and surface area can be adjusted to suit the need. This was the first of several studies that aim to arrange the graphene in such …

A Performance Comparison Between Nasa-Tlx And Surg-Tlx Workload Measurements, Isabella Duque

Symposium of Student Scholars

A performance comparison between NASA-TLX and SURG-TLX workload measurements

Undergraduate Student: Isabella Duque

Research Mentor(s): Dr. Luisa Valentina Nino

Mental workload has gained attention in the workplaces since technology has recently become more common. Mental workload is a concept with multiple dimensions, such as stress or time demand, that includes qualities about the task, the operator, and the workplace environment. NASA-TLX and SURG-TLX are mental workloads measurement tools. The NASA-TLX is currently the most used tool to measure workload and is a questionnaire of six dimensions: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort, and frustration. The SURG-TLX is a …

Portable Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy For Non-Invasive And Quantitative Assessment Of The Parathyroid Glands Viability During Surgery, Mark Romine, Linh Luong, Alex Moazzen, Katie Cho, Paul Lee

Symposium of Student Scholars

Portable Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy for Non-invasive and Quantitative Assessment of the Parathyroid Glands Viability During Surgery

Mark Romine, Linh Luong, Alex Moazzen, Katie Cho and Paul Lee

The parathyroid glands (PTGs) are responsible for the regulation of calcium levels in the blood by secreting a parathyroid hormone. This parathyroid hormone then regulates the body’s absorption, storage, and secretion of calcium, which can directly affect the way muscles and nerves operate. PTGs are often at risk of damage, or accidental removal during thyroid surgeries, because it is challenging to identify PTGs and to determine their viability. Current methods of visual inspections …

Ransomware Attacks In The Software Supply Chain: A Review Of Attack Vectors, Defenses And Gaps, Corey Brookins, Ava Norouzinia, Asia Shavers, Miranda Dominguez, Marie Nassif, Kenneth Burke, Shamar Lake

Symposium of Student Scholars

The proliferation of cyberattacks in the software supply chain domain is a pressing concern making them a formidable threat to software security and compromising its integrity and credibility which needs to be critically acknowledged and investigated. The lack of familiarity with the design and pattern of emerging attacks has contributed to the occurrence of several vulnerable software supply chain attacks in the preceding years. This project aims to conduct a comprehensive study of the various tactics and techniques employed by cybercriminals in this domain along with a focus on exploring the influence of software supply chain stakeholders’ traits, limitations, and …

A Study Of Iot-Optimized Low Power Asset Tracking With Cloud-Enabled Lorawan, Fatima Salman

Symposium of Student Scholars

The world of technology is expanding very quickly today, including technologies like cloud-based asset monitoring, but this makes it difficult to keep up with this technology's development and many other things. It is possible to monitor and manage your assets remotely with a cloud-based system thanks to its many features. The lifecycle of any commodity, including inventory, machinery, vehicles, and real estate, can be tracked using this kind of cloud-based system. Wide-area networks can be used to send data with the aid of low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technologies like LoRa, SigFox, and NB-IoT. This project will examine traditional, cloud-based, LPWAN-based …

Behavior Analysis Of Cement Concrete With Combination Of Waste Rubber And Glass, Abdulaziz Alebra

Symposium of Student Scholars

Glass and Rubber waste materials are valuable materials to use rather than throw which we have more than enough to use and recycle. Recycled glass and rubber materials can reduce and help major climate issues in our times based on the statistics reducing glass can bring down air pollution by 20% and also reduce water pollution by 50% as well as can reduce the use of landfill space. A laboratory study will be launched, and tests will be conducted following the ASTM standards, ASTM C143 for a concrete slump, and ASTM C31 for making and curing concrete specimens. Samples of …

Wireless, Handheld Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy To Quantify Tissue Microvascular Hemodynamics, Linh Luong, Alex Moazzen, Mark Romine, Katie Cho, Paul Lee

Symposium of Student Scholars

Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS) is a non-invasive optical method to characterize tissue optical properties for disease diagnosis and health monitoring. Two optical fibers are often used in a DRS system: one to deliver light to the tissue and the other to gather diffuse reflectance spectra, which provide quantitative details about the structure and composition of the tissue. The conventional DRS system, however, is expensive, bulky, and composed of fragile optical fibers and multiple electrical connections. Here we propose to build a wireless, handheld, and fiber-less diffuse optical spectroscopy system. Unfortunately, the diffusion approximation utilized for data analysis of the conventional …

A Study Of Deep Neural Networks In The Application Of Distracted Driving Detection, Wesley M. Heikes

ATU Scholars Symposium

As the world continues to become more technologically advanced, distracted driving will continue to be a growing danger to the public. Convolutional neural networks can be used to monitor driving and differentiate distracted driving from safe driving. A popular distracted driving dataset created by State Farm called the Distracted Driver Dataset can be trained with the Auto-Keras model API. Auto-Keras is a system that taylors a machine learning model to fit a given dataset. While experienced neural network designers can create neural networks to produce incredibly accurate results, Auto-Keras gives those with less expertise a method of designing a network …

Kayak Automated Steering, Nick Gilbert, Emily Trotter, David Asimbaya, Jorge Garcia, Natalie Nyatsanza

ATU Scholars Symposium

The problem presented is to automate a fishing kayak to make traveling long distances more manageable while maintaining the flexibility, portability, and size of the kayak without making major modifications to the already working item. The proposed design is aimed to solve the steering issues that a fixed seat in a kayak may have and the consistent paddling by supporting them with an automated system. The device is not meant to interfere with the system's manual operation but to provide a sense of aid when needed.

Design And Fabrication Of Gearbox, Mohammed Al Omairi, Ibrahim Alshammari, Nawaf Alshammari, Abdullah Aljohani, Hezam Al Marri

ATU Scholars Symposium

In this project, the gears and other mechanical parts of the gearbox will be created using 3D printing technology, and they will be joined to shafts and combined with ball bearings for smooth motion. This is constructed to make the ideas of gear mechanics and gear shifting simple to visualize and comprehend.

Premium Single Phase Motor For Abb Group, Daniel Johnson, Sky Friar, Jesse Willer

ATU Scholars Symposium

ABB Group is in search of a next generation premium single phase motor. An integrated drive paired to a three phase motor will allow the company to take advantage of current three phase motor automation capacity while presenting the end user with a simple, ready to use motor operating off of single phase power. This project is the design of such an integrated drive.

The drive will accept 115/230 Vac, single phase supply power and send it through a full bridge rectifying, voltage doubling circuit. This circuit will rectify the alternating current to direct current and increase the voltage to …

The Aerocap Aerodynamic Attachment For Pickup Trucks, Andrew J. Tucker, David Silk

ATU Scholars Symposium

As the pickup truck continuously becomes more popular in both commercial and family applications, the fuel efficiency of modern pickup design should be brought into question. According to CBS News, pickup trucks accounted for around 20% of all new vehicles sold in America in 2022, with the three most popular vehicles sold during the year all being pickups. However, these vehicles consistently have higher drag coefficients than other types of vehicles, namely sedans or crossovers. This leads to decreased fuel economy and more overall greenhouse gas emissions. Even in the case of an electric pickup truck, the high drag coefficient …

Distracted Driving Detection System, Tristan Caja, Lizzi Riney, Chance Gregurek, Wesley M. Heikes

ATU Scholars Symposium

In 2020, distracted driving claimed 3,142 lives in the United States[1]. Using current technology, our project aims to prototype a device that uses computer vision to crack down on this dangerous behavior while working with insurance agencies that provide incentives for customers to adopt the device. At the heart of this project is a deep learning algorithm trained to classify images on a set of 10 classes: safe driving, texting - right, talking on the phone - right, texting - left, talking on the phone - left, operating the radio, drinking, reaching behind, hair and makeup, and talking to passenger. …

Improving Quality Of Life Using Ict, Iot And Ai (Honet), Charles Koduru

Symposium of Student Scholars

Autonomous robots can be assigned with various tasks such as moving payload, analyzing terrain, and capturing data in an environment. For an Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) to execute such tasks the robot (Hussarion ROSbot) will require efficient algorithms and techniques to reference its current location. The robot is relative to surrounding obstacles in its predetermined path. The conducted research study explains the coordinated method used to successfully allow a robot to identify its position in the environment (Gazebo Simulation) and avoid obstructions with increasing velocity - contingent on nearby surroundings. The results show multiple robots individually tasked with distinct roles, …

Behavior Analysis Of Cement Concrete With Combination Of Waste Plastic And Glass, Mohamad Alamayreh

Symposium of Student Scholars

The waste stream in our society contains abundant plastic and glass waste, which can be effectively recycled to reduce the waste volume and save landfill space. Several studies have demonstrated that recycling glass can lower air pollution by 20% and water pollution by 50%, while recycling waste plastic can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save energy. To explore the potential use of recycled plastic and glass in concrete mixes, a laboratory investigation was conducted. Different percentages of plastic and glass waste will be tested as fine aggregates in cement concrete mixtures to evaluate their performance in terms of resistivity …

Impact Of Air Pollution Exposure In Latino Communities: An Equity-Based Framework For Environmental Engineering, Finn Vital

Symposium of Student Scholars

Examining Environmental Racism in Latino communities and the use of Environmental Engineering as a Solution

Background: Hispanics make up the second-largest ethnic group after whites, yet these communities live in more polluted environments than their white counterparts and have higher rates of poverty. With low-income neighborhoods come unsafe and often hazardous environmental factors that harm the health of their inhabitants. Environmental engineering, a newer branch that combines civil and chemical engineering ideas, could offer a variety of different solutions to environmental issues relating to air and water pollution. In A Terrible Thing to Waste by Harriet A. Washington, the author …

Functional Integrated Storage Housing, Thomas Dodds, Andrew L. Hilsdon, Alexander J. Holland, Vana Ducusin, Christopher Dew

ATU Scholars Symposium

The Corley lab director asked us to design and build a shelf for the robotics lab to help store parts and help organize the lab. The group decided on an electronic vertical rotating shelf design consisting of groups of bins on shelves. The unit is able to store and sort through thousands of pounds of parts and keep track of them using an computerized inventory system to streamline the operator’s workflow and improve efficiency.

Rc Flying Car, Andrew Hood, Ethan Jacobs, Nicholas Jones, Joshua Phifer

ATU Scholars Symposium

For this project, the goal is to build a 3D printed RC flying car with actuating wings and to show the modularity and adaptability of using 3D printing to create a multifunctional RC flying car. The goal with the actuating wings is to showcase how adaptable and modular 3D printing is and to also have a drivable car. Also, with a multifunctional 3D printed flying car, an end user could customize the flying car to their desired needs or wants. The reason for choosing to build a flying car instead of just a plane or a car is that it …

Demonstration Of Hydrogen Combustion Properties, Stephen M. Baker

ATU Scholars Symposium

The Hydrogen Flame Demonstration project encompasses the design, fabrication, and usage of a pressure vessel system with the goal of demonstrating the hazardous flammable properties that are associated with gaseous hydrogen. This project was completed as a part of a 16-week internship at the NASA White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico during the Spring of 2022. As the interest of technologies using hydrogen as a fuel, or otherwise, increases, informing and setting ‘best practices’ for use of pressure systems containing hydrogen becomes increasingly necessary. Gaseous hydrogen is highly flammable with the presence of air or oxygen. Since …

Functional Integrated Storage Housing, Noah M. Disheroon, Christopher Dew, Andrew L. Hilsdon, Vana Ducusin, Thomas Dodds, Alexander J. Holland

ATU Scholars Symposium

The vertical rotating shelf is a new design concept for a robotics laboratory that provides a compact and efficient storage solution for a variety of components and materials. The shelf is designed to maximize storage capacity while minimizing the amount of space required. The shelf consists of a sturdy metal frame with multiple shelves attached to it. The shelves are modular and the bins on the shelves can be changed to accommodate items of varying sizes. The rotating mechanism is powered by a motor, which allows for easy access to all items on the shelf without having to move or …

Servo Mounting Device And Collective Control System Design For The Forward Flight Aero Test Stand, Aaron Jones

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

The majority of the ten-week internship was spent designing a servo mounting device, and a collective control system for the Forward Flight Aero Test (FFAT) stand. The servo mounting device uses four threaded standoffs along with a top plate, held together with screws, that raises the servos above the protruding threaded rods and screws. The collective control system is a rectangular block that attaches the swashplate to the servo arms connected to the servo motor. This control rod is used to translate the rotation from the servo arm into collective control for the blade angle. The control rod has two …

An Introductory Investigation Of Dust Devils On Mars: Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling, Alexios Nicolas Philippou, Kakkattukuzhy M. Issac

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

This report investigates the flow characteristics of tornado like vortices which can be used to describe an array of axisymmetric rotating vertical columns of fluid such as dust devils, steam devils and tornadoes. These vortices have been recreated within vortex chambers in research facilities, but in focus of this report the investigation is conducted through numerical simulations using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software package provided by ANSYS. By varying the main governing nondimensional parameter of swirl ratio through the computational domain’s boundary conditions, different flow characteristics appear which confirm theories presented in previous papers. This enables the research conducted …

Modeling And Simulation Of An Electrostatic Lunar Particle Sieve, Aaron Berkhoff

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

The following research was conducted to develop a kinetic particle model, which simulates an electromagnetic sieve used for in-situ material utilization on the lunar surface. A code package was developed to simulate an electromagnetic sieve that uses electrodes to transport fine particles within a cylindrical device. Specifically, this research generates an initial working model for the sieve and tests different electrode configurations. The simulation models different electric fields generated by electrodes, kinetic particle dynamics, and lunar particle distribution. During the case study, which investigates different electrode configurations, it was determined that electrodes oriented such that electrodes located above and below …

Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project: April 2023 Status Report, Jill Schmidt

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

This report details the progress of the Missouri S&T Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project as of April 2023 and the future work the team will complete throughout the remainder of 2023 and 2024. This project began in January 2023, and students have been completing preliminary training activities, so they are prepared to begin assembling and testing the eclipse payloads during summer 2023. Throughout the summer, all team members will be actively engaged in this research project and participating in outreach events related to high altitude ballooning.

High Pressure Injection Process For Ceramic Composites, Samuel Weiler

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

Ceramic materials are valued for good heat resistance and corrosion resistance. Due to these benefits, they are widely used in the aviation, automotive, medical, construction, and other industries. Ceramic materials are also both hard and brittle, qualities that are not ideal in many applications. To reduce brittleness, and other undesirable characteristics of ceramics, engineers have turned to composites to increase the mechanical properties of these materials. By adding composite particles or fibers, these characteristics can be improved. Constructing ceramic composites is not without its challenges, however. Current processes are prone to high porosity, high shrinkage, and poor accuracy of parts. …

Performance Evaluation Of Additively Manufactured Carbon/Peek Composites, Matik S. Heskin

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

Carbon/PEEK composites have a broad range of applications due to their combinations of superior creep properties and excellent strength to weight ratios. Like all fiber-based composites they are limited geometrically by their required manufacturing processes. Additively manufactured (AM) materials overcome this issue and can be formed into incredibly complex shapes. By combining these two fields, a material limited in application by geometry can have its shortcomings supported with AM processes.

AM carbon/PEEK composites have already been created but this relatively new material still needs property characterization. Therefore, the objective of this work will be to evaluate the structural performance of …

From Land Grant To Space Grant, Mohammad Dehghani

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of Injection Molded Abs Using Conventional Steel And Novel Composite-Based Additively Manufactured Mold Plates, John Mitchell

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

Polymer injection molding processes have been used for over 100 years to create high-volume parts quickly and efficiently. Injection molding uses mold plates that are traditionally made of very hard tool steels, such as P20 steel, which is extremely heavy and has very long lead times to build new molds. In this study, composite-based additive manufacturing (CBAM) was used to create mold plates using long-fiber carbon fiber and polyether ether ketone (PEEK). These mold plates were installed in an injection molding machine, and rectangular flat plates were produced using Lustran 348 acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). Tensile testing was performed on …