Engineering Commons^™

Therapeutic Mechanical Horse, Cade M. Liberty, Aleya Dolorfino, Peter Philips, Zuzanna Dominik, Luke Watts

Mechanical Engineering

Jack's Helping Hand and its hippotherapy participants required a device to serve as an alternative to a live horseback riding experience that could also increase the range of riders. This would provide more clients with equine-assisted therapy that has proven to better the lives of people with both physical and mental disabilities. Horses can be unpredictable, tall, and sometimes anxiety-inducing, especially for new riders. Our group’s aim was to develop a mechanical horse that will be able to reduce these issues for equine therapy centers and the riders they help. When a rider gets to practice sitting on the horse …

Total Sky Imager Project, Ryan D. Maier, Benjamin Jack Forest, Kyle X. Mcgrath

Mechanical Engineering

Solar farms like the Gold Tree Solar Farm at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo have difficulty delivering a consistent level of power output. Cloudy days can trigger a significant drop in the utility of a farm’s solar panels, and an unexpected loss of power from the farm could potentially unbalance the electrical grid. Being able to predict these power output drops in advance could provide valuable time to prepare a grid and keep it stable. Furthermore, with modern data analysis methods such as machine learning, these predictions are becoming more and more accurate – given a sufficient data set. The …

Interactive Lego Girl Scout Arm, Chris Suzuki, Emi Okuyama, Bryson Shores, Karina Sandoval

Mechanical Engineering

This Senior Project Report document outlines the senior design project for Girl Scouts of California’s Central Coast (GSCCC) led by a team of four Mechanical Engineering students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The project encompasses the researching, designing, prototyping, and testing of a LEGO robotic arm for the Girl Scouts to learn more about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and provide support to each Girl Scouts cookie sales in their stores. Their goal was to build a LEGO robotic arm that will interact with customers at the Girl Scout stores and promote the girl scouts' interest …

Baja Bug Suspension, James Ankers, Rebecca Hansen, Dakota Robert Hollingsworth, Thomas Alfred Spycher

Mechanical Engineering

The goal of this senior project was to design and build a long travel front suspension system for a VW Bug. This started by defining the scope of the project and performing preliminary research. In this step, similar products were investigated, and research was done on stakeholders and customers. Next, concept development, design, and evaluation were performed. With this, the first iteration of our CAD model was designed, and physical prototypes were made. Using all this information, and feedback from advisors and sponsors, multiple iterations of our CAD were performed until the design was ready to manufacture. Drawings were taken …

B.A.C.O.N. (Battery-Powered Autonomous Cart Conversion) Autonomous Vehicle Design, Robyn C. Ribet, Damond Li, Tanner Hillman, Christopher Or

Mechanical Engineering

The goal of our project is to convert an electric go cart into an autonomous testing platform. We must enable autonomous braking, steering, and acceleration with electro-mechanical systems. We began the project with ideation to create our initial design and have since received ample feedback from faculty, students, and our sponsor. With this feedback we were able to refine our preliminary ideas and produce a detailed design supported with ample analysis, research, and external advice. We have developed our project in four main subsystems: Steering, braking, acceleration, and emergency braking. Following, we procured, manufactured, and assembled all of our designed …

Brush Clearing Tool -- Trimmer Assembly, Juan Martinez, Jayson Reyes Salvador, Paula X. Ortiz-Arango

Mechanical Engineering

The Final Design Review (FDR), this report, encompasses the work done by three Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering seniors along with two other teams of four (members each) for Brian Rois-Mendez. Originally, Dr. Mendez presented his idea to clear overgrown brush along trails. Our main purpose was to eliminate the drawbacks of his prototype and improve where we saw fit. For our team specifically, to reduce the workload of clearing brush, we focused on designing a seamless vertical and horizontal adjustment as well as increasing the trimmer’s cutting power. This report will cover the details of said evolutions.

Since the Critical …

Offshore Wind Turbine Gearbox, Michael Cooper, Ernesto Portillo, Kyle Hammer, Carson Bryan

Mechanical Engineering

New offshore wind turbine farms are currently in development on the East Coast and off California’s Central Coast. Preliminary design considerations from mechanical and civil engineers are needed to ensure constructability of these deep-water, floating-platform wind farms, which will then be connected to the power grid at the grid ties of Morro Bay and Diablo Canyon. The purpose of this project is to design an epicyclic gearbox fit to take in the torque loads from the slowly rotating rotor shaft and successfully output a significantly faster rotating motor shaft to allow more accessibility to generator options including ones with far …

Galilean Cannon, Mariah Kirkham, Marcus Beloney, Jonas Honeyman, Joshua Pratt

Mechanical Engineering

This comprehensive report details our team’s senior capstone design project, which involved the design, construction, and installation of a Galilean Cannon exhibit—a linear momentum experiment involving rebounding balls—for the San Luis Obispo Children’s Museum.

This report is split into four parts, as follows. Part One describes the needs of our sponsor and target market, as well as background research on the concept. Part Two details the ideation, decision making, and proofing process leading to our Preliminary Design concept. Part Three discusses the preliminary analysis and plans for the final prototype. Part Four describes construction and testing of the operational exhibit …

Uv Space Imager Enclosure Coating, David Silva Cortez, Victor Alexander Rempel Dekhtyar, Maria L. Muñoz

Mechanical Engineering

The goal of this project is to reduce the amount of stray light entering an ultraviolet (UV) imager through absorption. This report outlines the use of ZnO nanoparticles mixed in an epoxy matrix for use in a CubeSat enclosure. Through testing, our team verified that the ZnO and epoxy coating experienced a peak absorption between 360-370 nm. The epoxy mixture with the .75% by weight ZnO nanoparticles absorbed up to 99.9 % of UV light at its peak. The effect on material properties, such as Young’s modulus and ultimate tensile strength, was also tested. Tensile tests demonstrated that adding ZnO …

Tholos - Eva Sample Location Calibration Device, James Verheyden, Kat Gipson, Julia Rios, Ben Trust

Mechanical Engineering

To support NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions, an extravehicular activity (EVA) photometric calibration scale was developed to replace the Apollo-era Gnomon device. The Gnomon was a gimbaled stadia rod mounted on a tripod which provided color and reflectivity photo calibration, vertical orientation, and solar shadow direction, to include in photos of lunar geologic samples and features. With over 50 years of innovation since the first Gnomon deployment on Apollo 11, this redesign of the photometric calibration scale will support NASA’s missions in the modern day. The Tholos™, named after the ancient Greek repository of standardized measures, consists of a quadrupedal design …

Mechanized Theatre Turntable, Chloe Huiyi Chou, Ethan Lee Stroh, Ruodolf Reller Quelnat Rumbaoa, Davide Lanfranconi

Mechanical Engineering

This project aimed to create a remote-control and drive system for a theatrical turntable that was constructed by the Theatre and Dance Department of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Over the course of three quarters, the team successfully designed and manufactured a working verification prototype. This verification prototype was then tested, and the project sponsor verified that it met all specifications. The current iteration of the verification prototype can support up to a load of 1400 lbf, rotate a 12 ft diameter turntable clockwise and counterclockwise with a speed range of 1 to 4 rpm, and is able …

Multifamily Complex Smart Locks For Property Management And Tenant Security, April Mills, Allen Chen, Dana Kumamoto, Michael Cook

Mechanical Engineering

Maintaining and managing hundreds of locks and physical keys for an apartment complex can be time consuming and costly, especially when the apartments turn over to new tenants. Our goal was to develop a smart door lock that is compatible with Obodo’s management app for apartment complexes to make accessing apartments secure and simpler for tenants and easier to manage for owners.

We designed and manufactured one smart door lock that is powered with four AA batteries and utilizes a dynamic NFC device and Bluetooth technology. The board can enter a sleep mode which reduces power consumption. The dynamic NFC …

Polygait Conveyor Upgrade, William J. Schafer, Carolyn E. Palmer, Carly A. Tudor, Bryan C. Cordutsky

Mechanical Engineering

The PolyGAIT Conveyor Upgrade Mechanical Engineering Senior Project consisted of the complete design process to construct an operational “smart” control system for the conveyor belt loop on Cal Poly’s campus. As requested by project sponsor Dr. Tali Freed, an Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering professor at Cal Poly, the control system requirements included connecting existing conveyor components together, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader tunnels, photo eye motion sensors, motor powered rollers, and diverting elastic bands. The main design problem is when packages with RFID tags are moving at industry high speed (10 ft/s) they are occasionally not scanned by …

Demonstration Triple Spool Turbine And Controls, Synnovea Alaina Wood, Marco Eston Salguero, Michael Bruce Megna, Wyatt Scott Conner

Mechanical Engineering

The demonstration triple-spool turbine and controls project consisted of the conceptualization, design, analysis, build, and test of a demonstration model of three concentric driveshafts, such as those used in conventional turbofan (or power generation turbine) engines. Specifically, our team focused on building a basic, portable, mechanical model of such a driveshaft assembly, while also developing the backend firmware/control and user interface software used to control it. This model was developed with the initial intent of use in the Cal Poly engines lab with a goal of remotely controlling the motors driving the driveshaft model by means of a USB cable …

Flow Data Acquisition System, Samuel Chapman Maxwell Iv, Nathaniel Peter Werdmuller Von Elgg, Jameson Robert Spitz, Jason Jia-Shing Hu

Mechanical Engineering

Data acquisition is an essential part of the research and development process of water valves and fittings at Zurn Wilkins. In Fall 2021, Zurn Wilkins approached our senior project team with a goal of creating a modular data acquisition system that streamlines their design and testing processes for new products. Our team determined that a microcontroller-based system was the optimal way to deliver this goal and designed our system around a Raspberry Pi. We chose twelve sensors that were compatible with existing taps in the Zurn Wilkins facility. The sensors send their signal through waterproof receptacles into the Polycase waterproof …

Outdoor Laboratory And Testbed For Bridge Health, Richard L. Wood, Mitra Nasimi, Bowen Yang, Christine E. Wittich, Joshua Steelman, Jay Puckett, Daniel Linzell, Jinying Zhu, Mohammad Ebrahim Mohammadi

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Due to the aging problem of bridges and the limited financial resources in the United States, it is necessary to form a deeper understanding of existing, aging bridges in an effort to extend their in-service life. To address this problem, researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and engineers from the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT) identified three, out-of-service bridges (two steel and one concrete) to establish the Nebraska Outdoor Bridge Lab (NOBL). As the first step in NOBL’s development, geometric surveys of the current condition of each bridge were produced using lidar and Structure-from-Motion (SfM). This data contributed to …

Data-Driven Prioritization And Empirical Predictions For Bridge Scour In Nebraska, Richard L. Wood, Awgku Ahmad Hashim B. Awg Bolhasan, Basil Abualshar, Christine E. Wittich, Chung R. Song, Junke Guo, Mohammad Ebrahim Mohammadi, Mitra Nasimi, Yijun Liao

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The effect of scour at the bridge substructure results in an increase in the vulnerability of the overall bridge stability. Previous studies have found that current guidelines are often overly-conservative with respect to scour. This project aims to provide guidance on hydraulic modeling parameters and reasonable scour estimates specific to Nebraska conditions. This will enable engineers to assess bridge sites for scour more precisely for efficient and effective design and countermeasures. Four sites were surveyed for scour changes between the period of December 9, 2020, to April 20, 2021. At these four sites, overland and bathymetry survey data were collected. …

Construction Industry Hesitation In Accepting Wearable Sensing Devices To Enhance Worker, Harrison M. Fugate

Master's Theses

The construction industry is one of the most unsafe industries for workers in the United States. Advancements in wearable technology have been proven to create a safer construction environment. Despite the availability of these devices, use within the construction industry remains low. The objective of this research is to identify and analyze the causes behind the reluctance of the construction industry to implement two specific wearable safety devices, a biometric sensor, and a location tracking system. Device acceptance was analyzed from the perspective of the user (construction field labor) and company decision makers (construction managers). A modified unified theory of …

Neural Network Based Diagnosis Of Breast Cancer Using The Breakhis Dataset, Ross E. Dalke

Master's Theses

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in the world, and it is the second deadliest cancer for females. In the fight against breast cancer, early detection plays a large role in saving people’s lives. In this work, an image classifier is designed to diagnose breast tumors as benign or malignant. The classifier is designed with a neural network and trained on the BreakHis dataset. After creating the initial design, a variety of methods are used to try to improve the performance of the classifier. These methods include preprocessing, increasing the number of training epochs, changing network architecture, …

Runtime Energy Savings Based On Machine Learning Models For Multicore Applications, Vaibhav Sundriyal, Masha Sosonkina

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

To improve the power consumption of parallel applications at the runtime, modern processors provide frequency scaling and power limiting capabilities. In this work, a runtime strategy is proposed to maximize energy savings under a given performance degradation. Machine learning techniques were utilized to develop performance models which would provide accurate performance prediction with change in operating core-uncore frequency. Experiments, performed on a node (28 cores) of a modern computing platform showed significant energy savings of as much as 26% with performance degradation of as low as 5% under the proposed strategy compared with the execution in the unlimited power case.

Evaluating A Statistical-Based Assessment Tool For Stratifying Risk Among U.S. Air Force Organizations, Tiffany A. Low

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force Inspection System is a proponent of utilizing a risk-based sampling strategy (RBSS) for conducting inspections from major command levels down to the unit level. The strategy identifies areas deemed most important or risky by commanders and prioritizes them accordingly for an independent assessment by the Inspector General. While Air Force regulation specifies the need to use a RBSS for inspection, the implementation process is delegated to individual commands and, subsequently, wings. The 23rd Wing, the sponsor for this research, directed us to analyze a RBSS tool highlighted as an example from which to adopt for those units …

Effects Of Motion Measurement Errors On Radar Target Detection, Darnell D. Parker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the relationships present between signal-to-clutter ratios, motion measurement errors, image quality metrics, and the task of target detection, in order to discover what factor merit greater focus in order to attain the highest probability of target detection success. This investigation is accomplished by running a high number of Monte Carlo trials through a coherent target detector and analyzing the results. The aforementioned relationships are demonstrated via sample synthetic aperture radar imagery, histograms, receiver operating characteristics curves, and error bar plots.

Methods For Focal Plane Array Resolution Estimation Using Random Laser Speckle In Non-Paraxial Geometries, Phillip J. Plummer

Theses and Dissertations

The infrared (IR) imaging community has a need for direct IR detector evaluation due to the continued demand for small pixel pitch detectors, the emergence of strained-layer-super-lattice devices, and the associated lateral carrier diffusion issues. Conventional laser speckle-based modulation transfer function (MTF) estimation is dependent on Fresnel propagation and a wide-sense-stationary input random process, limiting the use of this approach for lambda (wavelength)-scale IR devices. This dissertation develops two alternative methodologies for speckle-based resolution evaluation of IR focal plane arrays (FPAs). Both techniques are formulated using Rayleigh-Sommerfield electric field propagation, making them valid in the non-paraxial geometries dictated for resolution …

Reconciliation, Restoration And Reconstruction Of A Conflict Ridden Country, Muhammad S. Riaz

Theses and Dissertations

Conflict has sadly been a constant part of history. Winning a conflict and making a lasting peace are often not the same thing. While a peace treaty ends a conflict and often dictates terms from the winners’ perspective, it may not create a lasting peace. Short of unconditional surrender, modern conflict ends with a negotiated cessation of hostilities. Such accords may have some initial reconstruction agreements, but Reconciliation, Restoration and Reconstruction (RRR) is a long term process. This study maintains that to achieve a lasting peace: 1) The culture and beliefs of the conflict nation must be continuously considered and …

Polarization-Based Image Segmentation And Height Estimation For Interferometric Sar, Augusta J. Vande Hey

Theses and Dissertations

To find scatterers in a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image, a modification is proposed to improve peak region segmentation (PRS) with region merging. The modification considers the polarization of each pixel before it is added to a segment to ensure the segment only contains pixels of the same polarization. Prior to region merging, the polarization of the segments is compared, so that only segments with the same polarization are merged into a single region. The segmented regions are used to find the height of each scatterer through interferometric SAR (IFSAR) processing. Multiple methods of IFSAR are examined to find the …

A Unified View Of A Human Digital Twin, Michael Miller, Emily Spatz

Faculty Publications

The term human digital twin has recently been applied in many domains, including medical and manufacturing. This term extends the digital twin concept, which has been illustrated to provide enhanced system performance as it combines system models and analyses with real-time measurements for an individual system to improve system maintenance. Human digital twins have the potential to change the practice of human system integration as these systems employ real-time sensing and feedback to tightly couple measurements of human performance, behavior, and environmental influences throughout a product’s life cycle to human models to improve system design and performance. However, as this …

One Factor At A Time Analysis To Modify Potting Technique For Manufacturing Of Bubble-Free High-Voltage Polyester Insulated Automotive Coils, Ahmad Nawaz, Ishaq Ahmad, Waseem Akram, Bilal Islam, Danil Yurievich Pimenov, Khaled Giasin, Muhammad Aamir

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The current study focuses on minimising the bubbles in polyester-insulated ignition coils, which were produced with a defect level of ~21–25% or 210–250 coils per 1000 batch size by using the potting method. This high-level rejection makes a substantial financial impact by increasing waste material, manufacturing, and after-sales costs. Hence, to control the bubbled problem without using expensive and maintenance-heavy techniques, the process parameters in the potting method were alternated and investigated using one factor at a time, which played a vital role in the formation/ reduction of bubbles in the ignition coil insulation. Process parameters, including pre/process heating, the …

Mars Rover Mechanical Arm & Turret, Kendall C. Chappell, Kyle D. Peterson, Rodrigo Gonzalez, Sam Cole

Mechanical Engineering

The Rover Mechanical Arm and Turret (RAT) team was originally tasked with designing and building a mechanical arm to attach to the Exo Mars rover: a project headed by Cal Poly professor, Rich Murray. The rover will be the 3rd in a series of rovers sponsored by Murray. Through ideation, comparison studies, research, and prototyping, the RAT team determined a design capable of fulfilling the sponsor’s specifications. The concept design is lightweight, durable, and capable of 4 degrees of freedom. With two links and a mechanical claw, the rover arm has the capability to retrieve small rock samples from Mars's …

Bike To The Future, Wanjiku Gichigi, Luisa Shu Yi Chiu, Alexander Kalman Dunn, Georgia Ann Holmes

Mechanical Engineering

Brian Higgins is a veteran with retinitis pigmentosa who enjoys biking. The motivation for this project was to design and manufacture a refined prototype of a bike attachment to assist Brian in safely biking to and from work. The customer needs, problem definition, background, design development, final design, testing, costs, and recommendations are provided in this report.

The solution for this project, as laid out in the design development section, was to design an assembly that would detect objects in the biker’s path and relays that information to them. The design incorporated a dashboard to conceal components within, protect them …

Dynamic Response Of Elastic Two-Story Steel Moment Frame Scaled Structure Equipped With Viscous Dampers, Garrett L. Barker, Alexander L. Poirier

Architectural Engineering

The authors of this report are Architectural Engineering undergraduate students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Damping is a complex, experimentally derived value that is affected by many structural properties and has a profound effect on the dynamic response of structures. Deducing the inherent damping of a steel moment frame and affecting the damping ratio with viscous dampers are two topics explored in this paper. Dampers are commonly implemented in resilient structures that perform better in a design basis earthquake, reducing the seismic cost and downtime. Undergraduate coursework does not delve into the factors that affect damping and …