Engineering Commons^™

Biochar Based Silicon Composites For Sensors Applications, Mauro Giorcelli, Mattia Bartoli, Alberto Tagliaferro, Carlo Rosso

Bio-Char II: Production, Characterization and Applications

Nowadays, the development of innovative sensors represents a field of great interest in the scientific community because of their ever increasing application in everyday life. Piezoresistive transducers are among the most interesting not only as sensors but also as actuators. They are of interest for a number of applicative fields ranging from pressure sensors to applications in nanomanipulation.

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Pairing Electrostatic Levitation With Triboelectric Transduction For High-Performance Self-Powered Mems Sensors And Actuators, Mark Pallay, Alwathiqbellah I. Ibrahim, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Scholarship

We demonstrate that an electrostatic levitation MEMS switch can be operated by applying mechanical pres- sure to a triboelectric generator. The toggling mechanism of the switch draws no current but requires a high actuating voltage, while the generator can supply a high voltage but only produces microwatts of power. The synergistic combination results in an entirely self-powered sensor and switch; the normally-closed MEMS switch can be toggled open by applying a threshold force to the generator without the need for any outside power or supplementary circuitry. A model of the MEMS switch and electrostatic force is validated with experimental data. …

Low-Cost Open Source Ultrasound-Sensing Based Navigational Support For The Visually Impaired, Aliaksei Petsiuk, Joshua M. Pearce

Michigan Tech Publications

Nineteen million Americans have significant vision loss. Over 70% of these are not employed full-time, and more than a quarter live below the poverty line. Globally, there are 36 million blind people, but less than half use white canes or more costly commercial sensory substitutions. The quality of life for visually impaired people is hampered by the resultant lack of independence. To help alleviate these challenges this study reports on the development of a low-cost, open-source ultrasound-based navigational support system in the form of a wearable bracelet to allow people with the lost vision to navigate, orient themselves in their …

Merging Parallel-Plate And Levitation Actuators To Enable Linearity And Tunability In Electrostatic Mems, Mark Pallay, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Scholarship

In this study, a linear electrostatic MEMS actuator is introduced. The system consists of a MEMS cantilever beam with combined parallel-plate and electrostatic levitation forces. By using these two forcing methods simultaneously, the static response and natural frequency can be made to vary linearly with the voltage. The static response shows a linear increase of 90 nm/V and is maintained for more than 12μm of the tip displacement. The natural frequency shows a linear increase of 16 Hz/V and is maintained throughout a 2.9 kHz shift in the natural frequency. This wide range of linear displacement and frequency tunability is …

Estimating The Outer Ring Defect Size And Remaining Service Life Of Freight Railcar Bearings Using Vibration Signatures, Joseph Montalvo, Constantine Tarawneh, Jennifer Lima, Jonas Cuanang, Nancy De Los Santos

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The railroad industry currently utilizes two wayside detection systems to monitor the health of freight railcar bearings in service: The Trackside Acoustic Detection System (TADS™) and the wayside Hot-Box Detector (HBD). TADS™ uses wayside microphones to detect and alert the conductor of high-risk defects. Many defective bearings may never be detected by TADS™ since a high-risk defect is a spall which spans more than 90% of a bearing’s raceway, and there are less than 20 systems in operation throughout the United States and Canada. Much like the TADS™, the HBD is a device that sits on the side of the …

Incentivising Multidisciplinary Teams With New Methods Of Procurement Using Bim + Blockchain, Bim Tudublin, Alan O'Reilly

Capstone Reports

This paper researches a potential method of incentivising AEC industry professionals to design to better than NZEB standards. Analysing the potential of a purposefully designed local microgrid storing excess energy generated by solar technologies embedded within the building envelope; the microgrid excess output is measured and recorded using a (Post Occupancy) “Blockchain” application and measured against the data provided at design stage on a (Predictive) “Blockchain” database. This paper researches how energy output predications at design stage, by multidisciplinary teams, may be enhanced by BIM + Blockchain Technology. The paper researches the potential of a digital twin (predictive versus post …

Estimation Of Surface Thermal Emissivity In A Vineyard For Uav Microbolometer Thermal Cameras Using Nasa Hytes Hyperspectral Thermal, And Landsat And Aggieair Optical Data, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Mahyar Aboutalebi, Timothy Wright, Ayman Nassar, Pierre Guillevic, Lawrence Hipps, Feng Gao, Kevin Jim, Maria Mar Alsina, Calvin Coopmans, Mac Mckee, William Kustas

AggieAir Publications

Microbolometer thermal cameras in UAVs and manned aircraft allow for the acquisition of highresolution temperature data, which, along with optical reflectance, contributes to monitoring and modeling of agricultural and natural environments. Furthermore, these temperature measurements have facilitated the development of advanced models of crop water stress and evapotranspiration in precision agriculture and heat fluxes exchanges in small river streams and corridors. Microbolometer cameras capture thermal information at blackbody or radiometric settings (narrowband emissivity equates to unity). While it is customary that the modeler uses assumed emissivity values (e.g. 0.99– 0.96 for agricultural and environmental settings); some applications (e.g. Vegetation Health …

Depressiongnn: Depression Prediction Using Graph Neural Network On Smartphone And Wearable Sensors, Param Bidja

Honors Scholar Theses

Depression prediction is a complicated classification problem because depression diagnosis involves many different social, physical, and mental signals. Traditional classification algorithms can only reach an accuracy of no more than 70% given the complexities of depression. However, a novel approach using Graph Neural Networks (GNN) can be used to reach over 80% accuracy, if a graph can represent the depression data set to capture differentiating features. Building such a graph requires 1) the definition of node features, which must be highly correlated with depression, and 2) the definition for edge metrics, which must also be highly correlated with depression. In …

A Tunable Electrostatic Mems Pressure Switch, Mark Pallay, Ronald N. Miles, Shahrzad Towfighian

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Scholarship

We demonstrate a tunable air pressure switch. The switch detects when the ambient pressure drops below a threshold value and automatically triggers without the need for any computational overhead to read the pressure or trigger the switch. The switch exploits the significant fluid interaction of a MEMS beam undergoing a large oscillation from electrostatic levitation to detect changes in ambient pressure. If the oscillation amplitude near the resonant frequency is above a threshold level, dynamic pullin is triggered and the switch is closed. The pressure at which the switch closes can be tuned by adjusting the voltage applied to the …

Computer Vision And Iot-Based Sensors In Flood Monitoring And Mapping: A Systematic Review, Bilal Arshad, Robert Ighodaro Ogie, Johan Barthelemy, Biswajeet Pradhan, Nicolas R. Verstaevel, Pascal Perez

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

Floods are amongst the most common and devastating of all natural hazards. The alarming number of flood-related deaths and financial losses suffered annually across the world call for improved response to flood risks. Interestingly, the last decade has presented great opportunities with a series of scholarly activities exploring how camera images and wireless sensor data from Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks can improve flood management. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature regarding IoT-based sensors and computer vision applications in flood monitoring and mapping. The paper contributes by highlighting the main computer vision techniques and IoT sensor approaches utilised in …

Application-Specific Oxide-Based And Metal-Dielectric Thin-Film Materials Prepared By Radio Frequency Magnetron Sputtering, Mohammad Nur-E-Alam, Wade Lonsdale, Mikhail Vasiliev, Kamal Alameh

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

We report on the development of several different thin-film functional material systems prepared by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering at Edith Cowan University nanofabrication labs. While focusing on the RF sputtering process optimizations for new or the previously underexplored material compositions and multilayer structures, we disclose several unforeseen material properties and behaviours. Among these are an unconventional magnetic hysteresis loop with an intermediate saturation state observed in garnet trilayers, and an ultrasensitive magnetic switching behaviour in garnet-oxide composites (GOC). We also report on the unusually high thermal exposure stability observed in some nanoengineered metal-dielectric multilayers. We communicate research results related …