Engineering Commons^™

Testing The Effectiveness Of Various Fabrics For Use In Protective Face Coverings, Isaac Daley

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Facemask requirements have been heavily implemented as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to test various fabrics that could be used in face coverings and determine which materials are best for reducing virus transmission rates. Of the seven fabrics tested, five were conventional home-use fabrics and the other two were surfaces modified with hydrophobic organosilanes. Wettability and droplet adherence tests were performed on each material. The materials that performed the best were decyltrichlorosilane (DTS) modified cotton, perfluorotrichlorosilane (FTS) modified cotton, and polyester. Contact angles for water droplets on these fabrics were 106°, 93°, and …

Design For Additive Manufacturing (3d Printing), Michael O'Donnell, Michael J. Levy

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of this project is to study the performance of a 3D printed mechanical part subjected to topology optimization. A part that is somewhat complex in its load bearing and geometry will be selected. That part will then be designed, finite element analysis will be performed on it to optimize its topology, and then it will be 3D printed and tested. The goal of topology optimization is to either save material cost and/or part weight due to the ability of 3D printing to manufacture parts with complex and obscure geometry.

Camper Conversion, Owen Christian Hafler, Zebediah Paul Benedict Zehentbauer, Madilyn Beatrice Willis, Zachary Eli Owen, Justin Robert Nicholas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 has seen hundreds of thousands sequestered in quarantine for long periods of time. When quarantined in an urban setting, many cannot leave their respective apartment buildings which only adds to the strain of isolation. In the context of isolation, the design team of Hafler, Nicholas, Owen, Willis, and Zehentbauer personally sought to incorporate their individual enthusiasm for nature with the benefits of living off-grid. After initial research and deliberation, the team discovered the “Skoolie” community and the plans for a mobile tiny home began production.

The team outlined the design project as the full design, …

Design And Testing Of A Feed-Forward Control System For Deployable Vortex Generators Dependent On Angle Of Attack, Solomon B. Whitmire, Christopher J. Chapanar, Kirklin M. Anderson, Nickalus R. Amon, Daniel W. Chech

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

A vortex generator (VG hereafter) is a common feature of an aircraft wing that disturbs the flow on the leading edge of the wing, thus energizing the boundary layer and reducing flow separation. For an aircraft experiencing flow separation, VGs can increase the lift-to-drag ratio of the wing and prevent stall; however, if flow separation isn’t an issue, the unnecessary frontal area of the VGs has the potential to produce parasitic drag. This study seeks to determine whether the use of a deployment system can improve the performance of VG’s by raising or lowering them depending on the angle of …

Design And Implementation Of Fully Integrated Cmos On-Chip Bandpass Filter With Wideband High-Gain Low Noise Amplifier, Yu Wang

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Current trends of fully integrated CMOS on-chip bandpass filter are classified into 1) the component level (i.e., active inductor, Q-enhanced passive inductor, negative resistance cancellation), and 2) the circuit level (i.e., adding transmission zeros on stopband, applying the zigzag technique for fewer inductors, superposition of different resonators). The demand for monolithic designs for portable devices attracts market interest in a fully integrated CMOS on-chip bandpass filter. Optimized minimal inductors (OMI) bandpass filter is a good platform for use in both active and passive bandpass filters, mainly because 1) it provides good stopband rejection for high interface attenuation, and 2) the …

Sample Mislabeling Detection And Correction In Bioinformatics Experimental Data, Soon Jye Kho

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Sample mislabeling or incorrect annotation has been a long-standing problem in biomedical research and contributes to irreproducible results and invalid conclusions. These problems are especially prevalent in multi-omics studies in which a large set of biological samples are characterized by multiple types of omics platforms at different times or different labs. While multi-omics studies have demonstrated tremendous value in understanding disease biology and improving patient outcomes, the complexity of these studies may increase opportunities for human error. Fortunately, the interrelated nature of the data collected in multi-omics studies can be exploited to facilitate the identification and, in some cases, correction …

Smart Home Pet Feeder, Andrew Markja, Simona Zdravev, Timothy Zubek, Christian Jackson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of this project was to design a Smart Home Pet Feeder that will allow the owner to feed their pet using 4 different methods. The methods are: manually, scheduled, app/url, Alexa/Google. The advantages of this design are that it will become convenient for pet owners who are busy and unable to make it back to their house to feed their pets remotely or for those who enjoy the use of technology from within their home for no-trouble feeding.

Longboard With Automatic Braking, Benjamin Roter, Logan Mashchak

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The automatic longboard anti-lock braking system is a system designed to prevent a longboard from exceeding 12 mph while considering slipping and skidding, making it safer to ride a longboard. Speed limiting will be accomplished through wheel speed and incline angle measurements and brakes engaging or disengaging depending on internal decisions. Excess energy will be removed from the ABS as heat. Wheel speed and incline angle testing were done with a wheel speed sensor and an inertial measurement unit, respectively. Internal decisions were tested with programming a microcontroller, and braking was tested with motors. The wheel speed sensor yielded measurements …

Dji Drone Modification, Sean Lacey, Seth Mancuso, Bryce Mckenzie

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

For this project, we set out to create a lightweight carrying case that would be mounted to a DJI Phantom 3. This case is designed to transport small packages, such as medications, from a delivery vehicle to their final destination. Based on our maximum drone lifting capacity of 600 grams, our case, servomotor, and contents had to weigh less than or equal to that value. The coronavirus pandemic has led to an increase in contactless delivery options along with the push for immunocompromised people to avoid contact with people that may be sick. Our product would help transport necessary supplies …

A Comparison Of The Effectiveness And Integration Capability Of Personal Aerial Vehicles (Pav) Into The Existing Transportation Network Of The City Of Los Angeles, Alec Perkins

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Traffic demands on the current infrastructure network is becoming more strained as populations migrate and increase, particularly in large cities. Therefore, city officials, transportation and traffic authorities and researchers, and city inhabitants themselves are always striving to find faster and more efficient means of transportation. With the rise of new technologies such as autonomous vehicles and drones, the applications for transportation are endless. Therefore, this paper will describe and explore the operations, and consequently the efficacy, of Personal Aerial Vehicles (PAV), also known as Urban Air Mobility (UAM). The machines, while still hypothetical, are being researched extensively by some of …

Electronic Locking Mechanism, Nicholas Tamburrino

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The electronic locking mechanism project will include an Arduino microcontroller to control inputs and outputs such as a keypad, an RFID reader, a stepper motor, and an LCD screen. The keypad and RFID reader will be used to verify the authorization for anyone coming through the locked door, the stepper motor will be used to physically lock and unlock the door, and the LCD screen will display the state of the locking mechanism.

Development Of Phagotrophic Algae-Based Process For Conversion Of Waste Organics To Algae Lipids As Potential Feedstock For Biofuel, Hannah Nelson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Interest in sustainable feedstock for biofuel has encouraged research on the production of phagotrophic algae from bacteria using a two-staged continuous-flow system. Bacteria cultures were fed the content of a waste stream from The J.M. Smuckers Company containing high concentrations of sugar. In the design, the bacteria effluent overflowed into the algae tank which was kept at a set volume. Several methods were developed to assist in maintaining the system at steady state and minimize the impact from contaminants. A rigorous cleaning protocol was implemented for both tanks, effectively eliminating protozoa from the bacteria system. The protozoa were decreased in …

Improving The Monitoring Of Post-Operative Patient Mobility, Owen T. Lacey, Alexandria Magyar-Averin, Elena Ewing, Samuel Elliott, Cameron Lazor

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Patient post-operative care is essential in attaining positive patient outcomes. To ensure proper blood circulation for recovery and healing is achieved, a patient's mobility is monitored. However, medical professionals aren't always available to continuously monitor patient progress. The clinical need for a medical device to monitor and quantify patient movement automatically is derived and addressed here. By designing a novel device and associated code, an engineering solution to this clinical need can be developed to monitor and improve patient post-operative outcomes in the absence of a medical professional. After completing research on the clinical need and gathering information from stakeholders …

Pandemic Healthcare: Face Shield Modification, Nathan Giunto, Sefra Manos, Brandon Ross, Catherine Seno, Catherine Howell

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Current face shields used in home and institutional healthcare settings create hardships for their wearers, which makes normal work routines more difficult. Recent mandates require healthcare workers to wear both surgical masks as well as plastic face shields when tending to patients. Unfortunately, the majority of face shields have been designed for hospital settings, which does not address the specific requirements for in-home therapist use. Some of the issues include their restrictive size, tendency to fog, susceptibility to glare, and sterilization and re-use issues. Our team proposes to design a face shield for homecare occupational therapists that addresses their unique …

Guitar Store Inventory, Alexander Didonato

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project displays my senior programming project for a made up Guitar store inventory.

Oblique Shock Wave Diffuser Design, Noah Riggenbach

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In this Honors Research Project, I will investigate the aerodynamic drag on certain defined ramps and cone/cylinder geometries representing oblique shock wave diffusers. The goal is to develop an oblique shock wave diffuser that decelerates supersonic air while maintaining a limited aerodynamic drag profile. The aerodynamic drag will first be obtained by calculating the pressure coefficient and the skin friction coefficient using the fluid simulation software ANSYS Fluent (version 2019). Limiting drag is important for aircraft flight performance, especially at supersonic speeds. At flight speeds above Mach 1, shock waves form and the air passing through these waves experiences a …

Influence Of Build Direction On Interface Regions In Additive Manufacturing Of Multi-Material Refractory Alloys, Cherish Christina Clark Lesko

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In the pursuit of optimum performance, materials engineering seeks to design the microstructure and thus the properties of a material through the control of the material composition and processing. Functionally graded materials (FGM) are designed to incorporate location-specific material properties through compositional changes within the part. Moving toward location-specific design of material properties requires the ability to produce material gradients in three dimensions which can be accomplished through the use of additive manufacturing (AM). This research examines the composition-process-structure-property relationship of early iteration titanium (Ti) and tantalum (Ta) graded alloys built in a novel laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process …

Rust Preventative Spray Varnish Verification And Nozzle Development, Dakota Snyder, Collin Whitely, Stephen Patrick, William Mccullough

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This document details the research and selection of five rust preventative spray varnishes that were to be tested. These varnishes are known as the five materials. The materials underwent rust testing and in-depth analysis to see which protects against rust the best. In addition, the document reports on the construction of a prototype self-contained, automated spray varnishing unit.

Augmenting Structure/Function Relationship Analysis With Deep Learning For The Classification Of Psychoactive Drug Activity At Class A G Protein-Coupled Receptors, Hannah Willow Shows

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G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) initiate intracellular signaling pathways via interaction with external stimuli. [1-5] Despite sharing similar structure and cellular mechanism, GPCRs participate in a uniquely broad range of physiological functions. [6] Due to the size and functional diversity of the GPCR family, these receptors are a major focus for pharmacological applications. [1,7] Current state-of-the-art pharmacology and toxicology research strategies rely on computational methods to efficiently design highly selective, low toxicity compounds. [9], [10] GPCR-targeting therapeutics are associated with low selectivity resulting in increased risk of adverse effects and toxicity. Psychoactive drugs that are active at Class A GPCRs used …

Reduction Of Energy Consumption Through Pump Efficiency Analysis, Riley Dodds

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Water scarcity, global warming, lack of fossil fuels, and future Green Act goals and legislature are at the forefront of policy change and election discussion within the United States. As civil engineers these topics are heavily discussed and challenged within the field and new solutions along with innovations are in constant demand. Within the community of Akron, the Akron Water Supply Water Plant continues to actively innovate and solve numerous concerns ranging from the quality of water to the overall operating costs. Energy consumption cost Akron Water Supply over $952,914.32 and 14,411,960 of kilowatts per hour of electrical energy to …

Influence Of Build Direction On Interface Regions In Additive Manufacturing Of Multi-Material Refractory Alloys, Cherish Christina Clark Lesko

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

In the pursuit of optimum performance, materials engineering seeks to design the microstructure and thus the properties of a material through the control of the material composition and processing. Functionally graded materials (FGM) are designed to incorporate location-specific material properties through compositional changes within the part. Moving toward location-specific design of material properties requires the ability to produce material gradients in three dimensions which can be accomplished through the use of additive manufacturing (AM). This research examines the composition-process-structure-property relationship of early iteration titanium (Ti) and tantalum (Ta) graded alloys built in a novel laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process …

Ab Initio Methylammonium Orientation And Monolayer Effects In Hybrid Perovskite Solar Cells, Jacob M. Artz

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Methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI3) has garnered attention due to their high solar cell efficiencies and low cost to manufacture, but commercialization is not yet possible owing to poor environmental stability. Thus, researchers seek ways which optimize the performance of the MAPbI3 solar cell by modifying the architecture and through interfacial engineering of the charge transport layers. Difficulties in understanding these devices arise from ion migration, charge separation and recombination, and metastable, thermally active precessions of the methylammonium (MA) moiety in the lead iodide framework. In this work, focus is given to the perovskite and an adsorbed monolayer, 2,3,4,5,6-pentafluorothiophenol (C6F5SH), which …

Gated Hall And Field-Effect Transport Characterization Of E-Mode Zno Tfts, Jason C. Anders

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Amorphous and nano-crystalline metal oxide semiconductors are an important class of materials under continuing investigation for emerging technologies. Accurate measurements of electron mobility in these materials is critical for furthering overall device development. This is complicated due to the fact that device measurements such as current response, transistor input and output characteristics, as well as mobility are affected by transport-limiting factors, such as charge trapping effects at the dielectric / active layer interface, and restriction of electronic transport across grain boundaries. In this work, we focus on the binary metal oxide thin film transistor (ZnO TFT), a normally-off (e-mode) transistor …

The Regulation Of Small Gtpase Rac1 Phosphorylation, Activation And Subcellular Localization By Δnp63Α, Amjad Ahmed Aljagthmi

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ΔNp63α, a member of the p53 family of transcription factors, plays a critical role in normal development and human disease. Loss of ΔNp63α expression is associated with increased cancer invasiveness and metastasis. The small GTPase Rac1 is a master regulator of cell motility, and increased Rac1 activity upregulates cell invasion in multiple human cancers. Increased cancer cell invasion associated with ΔNp63α knockdown and Rac1 activation suggests a novel mechanism by which ΔNp63α regulates tumor invasiveness through Rac1. Accordingly, we sought to delineate the effects of ΔNp63α on Rac1 phosphorylation, activation and subcellular localization. We identified a novel ΔNp63α/miR-320a/PKCᵧ signaling pathway …

Human Body–Electrode Interfaces For Wide-Frequency Sensing And Communication: A Review, Kurian Polachan, Baibhab Chatterjee, Scott Weigand, Shreyas Sen

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Several on-body sensing and communication applications use electrodes in contact with the human body. Body–electrode interfaces in these cases act as a transducer, converting ionic current in the body to electronic current in the sensing and communication circuits and vice versa. An ideal body–electrode interface should have the characteristics of an electrical short, i.e., the transfer of ionic currents and electronic currents across the interface should happen without any hindrance. However, practical body–electrode interfaces often have definite impedances and potentials that hinder the free flow of currents, affecting the application’s performance. Minimizing the impact of body–electrode interfaces on the application’s …

Common-Mode Capacitance Of Bus-Bar-Based Common-Mode Inductors, Harshita Singh, Scott D. Sudhoff, Robert R. Swanson

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Prediction of the common-mode self-capacitance of common-mode inductors is essential to their design in order to ensure effective operation over the frequency range of interest. This paper presents a model for the calculation of common-mode capacitance of a bus-bar-based common-mode inductor. An equivalent circuit of the inductor that accounts for high-frequency effects such as eddy currents in nanocrystalline cores is also set forth. The predicted and measured capacitances are compared for three such inductors.

A Novel Approach Toward High Accuracy Indoor Localization}{Masters Of Science, Yunshu Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a novel approach towards high accuracy indoor localization with smartphones. Better than all the existing indoor localization methods, our approach has the advantage of being infrastructural-free, robust, and it does not require any pre-installation in a new environment. To make this goal come true, we built a testbed that only uses the Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) of the smartphones to access the smartphones' raw acceleration and orientation data, then use these data to calculate the user's location by coordinate transformation and interactions. We conducted extensive experiments and evaluations for testbed validation as well as to carefully examine …

Osmocean, Katie Brodersen, Alec Lanter, Maulee Sheth, Nathaniel Kiefer, Emily Bywater, Kumansh Furia, Brittany Cafferty, Hayden Schennum, Yi Xie, Abigail Werner, Deepika Ramchandani, Sandra Cordoba, Akshay Rao, Jun Chen, Abhimanyu Das, David M. Warsinger

School of Mechanical Engineering Working Papers

The objective of this Build & Test was to prove that the Osmocean wave-powered batch reverse osmosis (BRO) system is physically realizable. Through a comprehensive and systematic engineering process, the optimal components for the WEC-side Osmocean coupling were procured, assembled, and tested. The results indicate that a control effort developed for the main loop throttle valve successfully tracks input signals meant to simulate interaction with the BRO system to within 6% error. Future work will include developing a controller for the kidney loop throttle valve to assist in keeping the main loop flow rate constant as well as the direct …

How Engineering Technology Students Perceive Mathematics, Meher R. Taleyarkhan, Anne M. Lucietto, Therese M. Azevedo

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Engineering Technology (ET) is often combined with that of Engineering. Although Engineering Technology is based on a more hands-on approach and Engineering a theoretical approach, the two majors share a very similar pedagogy in teaching students the same engineering and scientific principles. An observation by an ET professor found that ET students more often than not would eschew the use of mathematical computations and instead provide answers they believe to be correct, without computation or explanation. Leading researchers to delve into possible reasons as to why ET students are reluctant to utilize mathematics. This study utilized in-person interviews with 15 …

Design Project: Smart Headband, John Michel, Jack Durkin, Noah Lewis

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Concussion in sports is a prevalent medical issue. It can be difficult for medical professionals to diagnose concussions. With the fast pace nature of many sports, and the damaging effects of concussions, it is important that any concussion risks are assessed immediately. There is a growing trend of wearable technology that collects data such as steps and provides the wearer with in-depth information regarding their performance. The Smart Headband project created a wearable that can record impact data and provide the wearer with a detailed analysis on their risk of sustaining a concussion. The Smart Headband uses accelerometers and gyroscopes …