Engineering Commons^™

Locking Solar Tracking Bushing, Benjamin James Reed, Andrew Donald Maas, Angel Navarro-Iniguez, John Vincent Bruner

Mechanical Engineering

The contents of this final design review (FDR) outline the progress made by a team of four mechanical engineering students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo to solve the problem of torsional galloping in solar tracker panels since the preliminary design review. The project proposed by the sponsor, Christian Friedrich, on behalf of ARaymond is a design for a friction based braking system integrated into a redesigned bushing.

The CDR contains details about the system design, the design justification, the manufacturing plan, and design verification plan. In the system design section, the four manufacturing subsystems (bushing mount, actuation, …

Examination Of Installation Effects On Multi-Jet Meter Performance, Domenic Quiquero

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Alongside Mitchell Boody and Dr. Eric Savoury's supervision, the effect of additional internal friction of multi-jet flow meters caused by various orientations was experimentally analyzed. Multi-jet flow meters are commonly used in multi-unit residential buildings, thus by understanding the effects of the corresponding orientational loss, our industry partners can better assess water cost. This study coincides with Mitchell Boody's work using simulations to demonstrate the impact of frictional loss in multi-jet flow meters and building upon the work of Paulo Barros Rodrigues with other orientations.

Torque-To-Spin Efficiency Of Pitches Analysed With A Smart Baseball, Franz Konstantin Fuss, Batdelger Doljin, Jeong Kwangyul, Young-Kwan Kim

International Sports Engineering Association – Engineering of Sport

No abstract provided.

Computational Mechanics Implementation Of Performance Based Testing In Massive Concrete Structures, Gabriel Y. Riveros

ME 4233/6233 Fundamentals of FEA

Most of the nation’s critical water resource infrastructures are near or have exceeded their design lives. Consequently, there is a huge need for the development of assessment procedures that will change the way dams are maintained and operated with the intent of extending the service life. This is crucial for ensuring the safety and security of our nation’s public services. The combination of advanced computational mechanics and performance based testing (PBT) methods can be used to investigate the existing conditions of large concrete structures.

Performance based testing (PBT) is a new and innovative non-destructive testing technique that we are implementing …

Environmental Exploration With Long, Thin Tendril Robots, Or Building Plant Based Robots And Teaching Them How To Feel, Michael Benjamin Wooten

All Dissertations

Continuum robots offer unique potential benefits for environmental exploration, notably in using their maneuverability to navigate congested environments. In this dissertation, we show how circumnutation, a motion strategy, commonly employed by plants, can be implemented, and usefully exploited, with continuum robots. We discuss how the kinematics of circumnutation, which combines local backbone growth with periodic backbone bending, can be created using extensible continuum robot hardware. The underlying kinematics are generated by adapting kinematic models of plant growth. We illustrate the effectiveness of that approach with experimental results with a tendril robot exploring a congested environment. However, significant challenges remain in …

Full-Body Biomechanical Characterization Of Children With Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome During Gait And Activities Of Daily Living, Anahita Alahmoradiqashqai

Theses and Dissertations

Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is an inherited connective tissue disorder, often under-diagnosed, and presenting with frequent chronic pain and severe musculoskeletal symptoms that can drastically reduce the quality of life during one’s life span. While there are limited quantitative approaches in the literature on adult movements, the biomechanics of movements during activities of daily living (ADLs) in children have not been investigated comprehensively. Therefore, the primary purpose of this dissertation was to characterize the biomechanics of the musculoskeletal system and investigate the biomechanics of hEDS by quantifying joint dynamics and muscle activations during ADLs and gait in the pediatric population. …

Understanding The Nonlinear Dynamics Governing Vertical-Lift Vehicles With Variable-Speed, Fixed Rotors, Stephanie Vavra, Micah Busboom, Aleea Stanford, Keegan Moore

UNL Student Research Days Posters, Undergraduate

Problem: Traffic significantly limits travel in urban areas. • The NASA Urban Air Mobility Project is developing an air taxi as an alternative mean of transportation (Fig. 1).

Challenge: Operating rotors at different frequencies may cause the cabin to vibrate at high amplitudes. Such effects are currently unknown.

Objective: Understand the effect of variable speed rotors on passenger comfort.

From the reduced-order modeling simulations, it can be assumed that counteracting the rotor speed in-balances can reduce the displacement and vibrations experienced at the center of the wing. In other words, should a rotor not maintain its optimal operation speed, reducing …

Dynamic Maneuvers For Satellite On-Orbit Servicing Utilizing Novel Continuum Robotics: Development & Experimentation, Nathan Dalton

Masters Theses

Robotic on-orbit servicing is a developing technology that seeks to increase the longevity and repairability of faulty or aging resident space objects. In this research, the development of a flexible continuum manipulator for a small satellite system that performs low-complexity on-orbit servicing or debris removal is presented. Derivations of manipulator kinematics are described in detail, a non-linear control scheme has been developed, and the accuracy and servicing applications for the prototype are evaluated and discussed. The manipulator has been tested on an air-bearing dynamics simulator, and the results are extensively analyzed. System recommendations and future work suggestions are presented.

Concurrent Identification, Characterization, And Reconstruction Of Protein Structure And Mixed-Mode Dynamics From Rdc Data Using Redcraft, Hanin Rafiq Omar

Theses and Dissertations

A complete understanding of the structure-function relationship of proteins requires an analysis of their dynamic behaviors and the static structure. However, all current approaches to studying dynamics in proteins have their shortcomings. A conceptually attractive and alternative approach simultaneously characterizes a protein's structure and its intrinsic dynamics⁠. Ideally, such an approach could solely rely on RDC data-carrying both structural and dynamical information. The major bottleneck in utilizing RDC data in recent years has been attributed to a lack of RDC analysis tools capable of extracting the pertinent information embedded within this complex data source.

Here we present a comprehensive strategy …

Dynamic Analysis Of Cubesat Impact On Lunar Surface, Dalton C. Korczyk

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

EagleCam is a pico-satellite (CubeSat) with dimensions of 100 x 100 x 150 mm3 that is going to the moon as a payload of the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander. The CubeSat’s purpose is to record the lunar landing from a 3rd person view. Unlike other CubeSats, EagleCam is designed to impact the lunar surface and there is no history to build off of. Specifically, EagleCam will need to survive a 30 m drop onto the lunar surface with all internal components fully operational post impact. This thesis is focused on the analytical, numerical, and experimental methods for determining the …

On The Use Of High-Frequency Surface Wave Oceanographic Research Radars As Bistatic Single-Frequency Oblique Ionospheric Sounders, Stephen R. Kaeppler, Ethan S. Miller, Daniel Cole, Teresa Updyke

CCPO Publications

We demonstrate that bistatic reception of high-frequency oceanographic radars can be used as single-frequency oblique ionospheric sounders. We develop methods that are agnostic of the software-defined radio system to estimate the group range from the bistatic observations. The group range observations are used to estimate the virtual height and equivalent vertical frequency at the midpoint of the oblique propagation path. Uncertainty estimates of the virtual height and equivalent vertical frequency are presented. We apply this analysis to observations collected from two experiments run at two locations in different years, but utilizing similar software-defined radio data collection systems. In the first …

Indoor Air Quality Through The Lens Of Outdoor Atmospheric Chemistry, Jonathan P.D. Abbatt, Douglas B. Collins

Faculty Contributions to Books

Outdoor atmospheric chemistry and air quality have been the topic of research that intensified in earnest around the mid-20^th century, while indoor air quality research has only been a key focus of chemical researchers over the last 30 years. Examining practices and approaches employed in the outdoor atmospheric chemistry research enterprise provides an additional viewpoint from which we can chart new paths to increase scientific understanding of indoor chemistry. This chapter explores our understanding of primary chemical sources, homogeneous and multiphase reactivity, gas-surface partitioning, and the coupling between the chemistry and dynamics of indoor air through the lens of …