Engineering Commons^™

Machine Learning Methods For Hypervelocity Fragment Flyout Characterization, Katharine Larsen

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Resulting from breakup events, such as collisions and explosions, hypervelocity fragments create potential hazards for both terrestrial and on-orbit environments, such as terrestrial weapons explosions and satellite breakup events, respectively. To avoid unnecessary damage, an accurate understanding or characterization of hypervelocity fragmentation events is vital. Currently, publicly available two-line elements collected from on-orbit breakup events are limited, excluding pre-detonation parent body conditions, such as orientation, and information of smaller fragments. The uncertainty of these datasets varies between each collected set. Therefore, the overall goal of this work is to employ machine learning to estimate distribution characteristics of a space debris …

Automated Plant Morphological Assessment And Microbial Community Monitoring In Simulated Lunar Regolith, Collin R. Topolski

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Upcoming lunar bases will need to leverage in-situ resources to ensure long-term sustainability and reduce mission costs. One key challenge is food production, which could be addressed by growing crops in lunar regolith-based substrates. However, lunar regolith lacks essential nutrients, requiring organic amendments to support continuous plant cultivation. This study examined the impact of manure-amended lunar regolith simulant on Mizuna mustard growth while assessing microbial community diversity and functionality. To support this effort, a custom software pipeline utilizing an open-source library, PlantCV, was developed to automatically track plant leaf area and height via image analysis. Results indicated that amended rhizosphere …

Stability Limits Of Uncertain Systems In The Presence Of Unmatched Coupled Dynamics And Actuator Dynamics With Adaptive Architectures, Bronson Saulo

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Uncertain systems with coupled dynamics and actuator dynamics are prevalent in various applications spanning private, commercial, and government sectors. While stabilization and command tracking strategies exist, they often rely on idealized assumptions, such as negligible actuator bandwidth limitations and matched coupled dynamics. In order to mitigate actuator-induced limitations, we first employ standard model reference adaptive control (MRAC) architectures. We then proposed two architectures: modified hedging reference modeled based MRAC and modified expanded reference model based MRAC. In order to deal with coupled dynamics, we used an observer design to estimate the states of unmatched coupled dynamics. In addition, Lyapunov stability …

Graduate School Blog - April 2025 Volume 1, Cynthia Haynes

UofM Grad School Blog

The April 2025 UofM Graduate School Blog highlights a month full of events, stories, and celebrations, beginning with Dr. Deborah Tollefsen’s personal graduate school journey, shared during the “Is Graduate School Right for Me?” virtual workshop an inspiring narrative of resilience, mentorship, and finding purpose through education. This edition also spotlights Graduate Student Appreciation Week, featuring a robust lineup of events such as a virtual town hall, resume and job market workshop, student social and awards ceremony, study session, and social dinners all designed to support, celebrate, and connect the UofM graduate student community. With opportunities to hear from …

Smart End Effector Docking System, Matthew Becker, Julie Corey, Mia Gallarate, Rachel Lee, Adam Shpolyansky

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The Smart End Effector Docking System (S.E.E.D.S.) serves as an autonomous docking system to assist with replenishing fluid and charging the Agricultural Robot (AgBot) that has been developed by the Robotic Systems Laboratory. The docking system aims to improve autonomous capabilities by allowing the AgBot to recharge and transfer fluid independently, removing the need for human involvement. The S.E.E.D.S. project can additionally help to address labor shortages and safety hazards associated with agricultural workers by providing several functions including fluid transfer and power transfer for charging.

Trigger Buddy, Alex Requadt, Alan Chen, Max Fernandez

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Gun violence in the United States, particularly unauthorized firearm use by children and impulsive suicides, remains a devastating public health crisis. Despite widespread use of gun safes and locks, many remain ineffective or inconvenient, with most unauthorized users accessing firearms that were either unlocked or secured with easily bypassed mechanisms. Biometric locks present a promising alternative, but existing products often fall short in speed, reliability, and usability. To address this gap, we developed Trigger Buddy, a biometric handgun lock designed to balance accessibility, durability, and security. Trigger Buddy mounts directly to a handgun's picatinny rail and uses a fingerprint sensor …

3d Printing Filament Machine (Revers3d), Jairo Gonzalez, John Gonzalez, Jaime Garcia, Xiaotian (Stephen) Yan, Andrew Huynh, Jose Canez

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The Reverse3D printer project aims to develop an innovative machine that recycles leftover 3D printed parts into new, usable spools, promoting sustainability in the 3D printing community. The project will create a new dimension of versatility when using 3D printing filament while still being user-friendly. The device will incorporate a grinding unit to grind up the parts, a heating element, an extrusion system, a cooling system, and a spooling system to create a continuous filament strand. Our ultimate goal is to grind the plastic to a size capable of being melted down and molded into a spool-like form suitable for …

Bronco Evtol: Vfs 2024 - 2025 Dvbf, Caroline Barbar Askar, Lanie Pritchard, John Bowers, Jacob Finley, Gus Gianotti, Luke Helwee

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Common vertical take-off vehicles, such as helicopters, have been useful for transportation, rescue, and fire-fighting applications. However, these vehicles contribute significantly to CO2 emissions and are extremely loud. Electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles ( e VTOLs) have been proposed as an alternative vehicle which can perform the same functions, without the costs associated with a helicopter. In this paper, we develop a conceptual design for an eVTOL which satisfies the requirements of the annual Vertical Flight Society's Design-Vertical-Build-Fly Competition. We focus our conceptual design on three subsystems: Propulsion, Airfoils, and Controls. These subsystem designs are verified using Finite Element …

2025 Aiaa Design/Build/Fly, Chris Campanile, Michael Cavan, Tyler Choo, Jason Dionida, Mateo Jovicic, Zane Kempler, Cole Lourenco, Derek Nease, Spencer Roberts

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This thesis presents the design, fabrication, and testing of Santa Clara University's 2025 AIAA Design/Build/Fly (DBF) competition aircraft. The project comprises two integrated systems: the Mothership (MS), a 6-ft wingspan electric aircraft, and the Autonomous Parasite Glider (APG), designed to complete four missions: rapid assembly, airworthiness, efficient fuel transport, and autonomous glider deployment. MS employs a tapered wing with an MH 20 airfoil and a Scorpion SII-4025-520 kV motor, selected for aerodynamic efficiency and mission-specific payloads, including wingmounted steel-filled fuel tanks. The APG, constructed from carbonreinforced foam, is deployed via spring latch and guided by an Ardupilot GPS controller.

Development …

S.P.R.O.U.T (Seedling Planting And Robotic Observation With Unsupervised Tracking), Katharine Ott, Joshua Spagnola, Brayden Ristow, Elliot Clyde, Anshuman Sahu, Zen Yamao

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The current commercial agriculture market reveals two significant gaps: one for small-scale farmers needing automation, and another for the efficient planting of seedlings. Acquiring large-scale automated equipment is often impractical for small-scale farmers due to high costs and the mismatch between commercial-scale solutions and the needs of smaller operations, creating a need for accessible robotic solutions. The Seedling Planting and Robotic Observation with Unsupervised Tracking (SPROUT) design addresses this gap by developing an autonomous seedling planting attachment for the Agriculture robot (Agbot) platform - a modular agricultural robot developed by Santa Clara University (SCU). This year’s work involved designing and …

Portable Stage, Theo Cabot, Martin Decker, Liam Jacobo

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The following report details the design, analysis, manufacturing, and testing of the prototype for the Portable Auto-Leveling Stage. Time and labor constraints required the prioritization of crucial safety subsystems over those conceived with performance enhancement in mind. FEA simulations displayed expected results on a fully assembled stage unit, whereas physical testing was run on one of the leg assemblies and the unconstrained stage deck. Wiring and verification of input response came to fruition in a testing system untethered to the physical stage deck.

Data-Driven Decision Making For Quality Control In Foundry Applications, Ronit Shetty

Dissertations

In the transformative landscape of Industry 4.0, advanced quality control in manufacturing demands innovative methods for processing and analyzing datasets. This dissertation presents a comprehensive study on leveraging high volume data and machine learning to enhance decision making in the foundry industry. The research explores three crucial challenges in the foundry industry: predicting surface roughness, monitoring refractory coating thicknesses, and comparing feature extraction techniques for surface quality classification. The findings underscore the transformative potential of integrating advanced feature engineering techniques and machine learning into manufacturing quality control.

The first of the three challenges introduces a framework that integrates digital images …

Observations Of Sea Ice Thermal Strain And Motion At Geophysically Relevant Scales, Larson M. Kaidel

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Ongoing and unprecedented Arctic sea ice change as a result of anthropogenic climate change impacts life in the Arctic and beyond. The sea ice cover is becoming less expansive, thinner, younger, and more dynamic. Quantifying processes and properties that differ between old versus young and thick versus thin ice is central understanding the sea ice cover, improving climate change predictions, and developing strategies to adapt and mitigate the adverse effects of sea ice loss. Therefore, we seek to better understand how a key inherent ice property, the thermal strain coefficient, changes as ice types change, and observe how sea ice …

Understanding Firn Dynamics: Modeling And Microstructure From East Antarctica, Ilyse Horlings

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Glacier ice is formed from the accumulation of snow and its compaction through a transitional material called firn. Firn dynamics are fundamentally influenced by climatic factors, such as temperature and snow accumulation rate, and so are crucial for understanding a number of cryospheric applications. For example, ice-sheet mass loss contributions to sea-level rise from repeat satellite-altimetry observations depend on calculating firn density and its evolution. Past atmospheric gases in ice core bubbles are often younger than the surrounding ice, and their exact age depends on how firn closes off interconnected pores to become impermeable. Models often estimate bulk properties, such …

Helical Products Parts Display Stand, Binh Nguyen, Emily Yuan Mendyke, Zoe Porter

Mechanical Engineering

Helical Products needs a new product display stand that will demonstrate their custom springs, couplings, and u-joints. Their current display stand, a marble run contraption, is large, loud, and difficult to transport, so they would like the new stand to remedy these issues. The goal of this senior project is to create a display stand that captures the attention of their customers with dynamic product demonstrations while addressing the issues outlined above.

The new display stand is also a marble run contraption, but instead of being almost 4 feet tall and 3 feet long, it is 23” tall, 26.25” long, …

Enhancing Remote Sensing Imagery Temporal Resolution Using Starfm Data Fusion Approach For Improved Land Surface Monitoring, Ahmadreza Pourghodrat

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

High-resolution remote sensing imagery plays a critical role in various domains, such as farm-level agricultural operations, environmental monitoring, and natural resource management. However, data with high spatial resolution typically have low temporal resolution, and those with high temporal resolution often lack spatial detail. For example, Landsat 8 and 9 satellites deliver high spatial resolution images with a 30-meter pixel size but suffer from low temporal resolution, with a 16-day revisit cycle. In contrast, satellites like MODIS and VIIRS provide daily images but with a much coarser spatial resolution (375 meters or more), reducing spatial details. Additionally, there is a lack …

Explainable And Reduced-Feature Machine Learning Models For Shape And Drag Prediction Of A Freely Moving Drop In The Sub-Critical Weber Number Regime, Md Amanullah Kabir Tonmoy

Theses and Dissertations

Accurately predicting the shape and drag of a moving drop is crucial in many spray applications. However, due to the complex interaction between the drag force and drop shape deformation, accurate prediction of drop shape and drag from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation requires large computational resources and time. A novel data-driven approach using NARXNN (Non-linear Auto Regressive eXogenous input Neural Network) is proposed in this study, which recurrently predicts the drop shape and drag for a given Weber number (We) and Reynolds number (Re), in the sub-critical We regime where there is no drop breakup. The average error in …

The Impact Of Tariffs On Auto Parts Trade With China, Canada And Mexico: Ai-Driven Strategies For Supply Chain Optimization, Katie Cerda, Layla Dickerson, Riley Gibson, Oluwabunmi Sanusi

Posters - 2025

U.S. tariffs (7.5-25%) on auto parts from China, Canada, and Mexico are severely disrupting the automotive industry, a key global economic driver. These tariffs dramatically increase production costs and vehicle prices, potentially by up to $12,200 per vehicle (CBS News, 2025; MarketWatch, 2025). These tariffs necessitate major supply chain adjustments, leading to inefficiencies (MIT Sloan, 2024). Supplier diversification, while intended to mitigate tariff impact, extends lead times and shrinks profit margins (XenonStack, 2025). The industry's complex supplier network is now highly vulnerable, compelling companies to seek more adaptable strategies. AI-driven technologies like predictive analytics and route optimization offer potential solutions …

How Do People Sit In Cars? Reproducibility Of Vehicle Seat And Body Positions For Individual Occupants, Kobie Henson, Nathan Sadler

Posters - 2025

Some crash investigators have assumed that different people having the same stature and gender will reliably choose the same (or a similar) seat adjustments each time they sit in a specific make and model of automobile [Lee]. Knowledge of how a person sits in an automobile is important, because position and seat adjustment can have a significant influence on the way force is distributed throughout a human body during a collision, as they move relative to the vehicle and then contact various components within the interior [West]. However, conclusions reached from such exemplar studies depend on whether assuming that similar-sized …

Speed Measurement On Swri Shell Eco-Marathon Vehicle, Andrew Garza, Benjamin Openshaw, Scott Roelker Murillo

Posters - 2025

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) operates a fully autonomous electric vehicle known as the Shell Eco-Marathon Vehicle. This platform provides students with the opportunity to develop software, thus gaining hands-on experience in autonomous vehicle systems and advancing their careers. The vehicle competes against other fully autonomous vehicles, testing the performance and reliability of its software in real-world scenarios.

• However, improper handling during shipping damaged the previous speed encoder decoding method. A temporary fix was implemented, but it was limited — it provided accurate readings up to 3MPH but often falsely detected movement when the vehicle was stationary.

• Our project …

Cult: Virtual Tourian, Ian Poll

Posters - 2025

Introduction: The Blank Shepherd Building is an important place at St. Mary’s University where students research, invent, and work together. But not everyone can visit it. This virtual tour solves that problem by using games and technology to bring the building to life.

Stem Voyager, Alexis Nunez, Jaya Mcgill, Patrick Canez, Fernando Jaime, Pedro Perez, Gianluca Porzio

Posters - 2025

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" This is a question that people are far too familiar with. Many STEM professionals would also say that they are not currently in the career that they initially thought. Somehow there was a moment of inspiration in their life that catalyzed their decision to pursue a STEM degree. This project aims to convert a school bus into a mobile STEM lab that brings hands-on, engaging STEM experiences to middle school students and supports teachers with interactive lessons. The bus will address space and cost challenges by serving as a flexible, …

Clinical Use Of Sit2stand Ai Application For Kinematic Analysis In Prosthesis Users., Samerial Brown

Posters - 2025

Biomechanical analysis is a tool to evaluate prosthetic and orthotic patient's. These tools offer the clinician capability of understanding the mechanism of injury, gait deviation or prosthesis problem. Video based analysis require expensive hardware, software, and training which sometimes costs $40-100,000.

The recent advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up the possibility of acquiring high speed human motion video analysis using low-cost hardware and open-source machine learning algorithms. Still, free assessments like the Sit2Stand test is a current clinical outcome measure which assesses ability of a patient to stand and sit as fast as possible 5x. The faster the …

Towards The Advancement Of Violence Recognition In Security Footage With Explainable Neural Networks, Paris Her

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation investigates the problem of violence recognition in surveillance footage using computer vision and machine learning techniques. More specifically, our goal is to achieve interpretable and explainable deep learning models because violence recognition is a sensitive task. We first propose to perform violence recognition using a 3D convolutional neural network through intuitive hyperparameter tuning and transfer learning. We utilize a state-of-the-art 3D model used for general activity recognition that is lightweight and adjustable. Along with that, we introduce a data augmentation technique called "resize-within" which uses interpolation, rather than cropping, to resize the original input video to a new …

Flex-Fuel Mixing-Controlled Combustion Enabled By Prechamber Ignition (Pc-Mcc), Jared J. Zeman

Dissertations (1934 -)

There is an imminent need to displace fossil diesel fuel with cleaner burning, domestically produced, renewable fuels for use in heavy-duty engines. Bioethanol is a prime candidate as it widely adopted in the U.S. as a gasoline additive ranging in volume percentage from 10% (E10) up to 85% (E85). Direct substitution of market available ethanol-gasoline blends for diesel fuel is not plausible as the stark reactivity differences would not constitute the same ignition quality nor achieve auto-ignition at all. This work focuses on the development of prechamber enabled mixing-controlled combustion (PC-MCC) as an advanced ignition strategy to facilitate reliable ignition …

Sorption-Based Lithium Extraction From Diverse Brines Using Aluminium-Based Adsorbent, Mohsen Farrokhrouz, Mahdi Madelatparvar, Yasaman Boroumand, Amin Sarmadi, Mehdi Khiadani, Amir Razmjou

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

As demand and pressures to produce more lithium increases in the world in a more cost effective and environmentally sustainable, the existing proven methods such as aluminate-based adsorption should be adapted and combined with naturally heated brines to reduce cost, complexity and carbon footprint of production. In this study, an improved type of aluminate-based adsorbent was utilized to adsorb Li content of different brine sources, to show the relationship between the performance of the adsorbent and other factors in the brine. Different brine samples were synthesised from various geographical locations around the world to check the adsorption capacity of the …

Long-Term Techno-Economic Analysis Considering System Strength And Reliability Shortfalls Of Electric Vehicle-To-Grid-Systems Installations Integrated With Renewable Energy Generators Using Hybrid Gru-Classical Optimization Method, Md Ohirul Qays, Iftekhar Ahmad, Daryoush Habibi, Paul Moses

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Higher penetration of Electric Vehicle-to-Grid charging stations (EV2GCSs) in power grids integrated with renewable energy generators (REGs) result in system-instabilities raising the risk of blackout issues. Although techno-economic feasibility of EV2GCSs has been identified within the literature addressing power outage and financial concerns as a contemporary solution, no long-term techno-economic analysis has been investigated considering system strength and reliability shortfalls before the EV2GCSs installation. Therefore, this research aims to evaluate the long-term (2025–2045) techno-economic analysis of EV2GCSs into REGs-integrated grid systems by accounting for system strength and reliability factors. A novel optimization framework is developed, combining Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) …

Building Services Engineering March/April 2025

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Transdisciplinary Collaborations For Advancing Sustainable And Resilient Agricultural Systems, Brooke Mayer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Feeding the growing human population sustainably amidst climate change is one of the most important challenges in the 21st century. Current practices often lead to the overuse of agronomic inputs, such as synthetic fertilizers and water, resulting in environmental contamination and diminishing returns on crop productivity. The complexity of agricultural systems, involving plant-environment interactions and human management, presents significant scientific and technical challenges for developing sustainable practices. Addressing these challenges necessitates transdisciplinary research, involving intense collaboration among fields such as plant science, engineering, computer science, and social sciences. Five case studies are presented here demonstrating successful transdisciplinary approaches toward more …

Using Software Defined Radio To Detect Human Life, John-William Cordero , '25

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

The goal of this project is to develop a device that uses software-defined radio to detect human biological activity through walls by detecting changes in the received signals depending on if a human is present or not. Such a device will help local survivors locate victims from being stuck under collapsed buildings and debris, as opposed to having to wait for search and rescue teams. By making a relatively low cost and easy to use device, a more practical application of human detection was developed. Results showed that while the device requires user interpretation to determine the presence of a …