Engineering Commons^™

Hydropower Collegiate Competition 2026, Andres R. Arreola, Sammy D. Taporco, Kathryn E. Tinney, Ahmer S. Dhillon

Mechanical Engineering

The Hydropower Collegiate Competition (HCC) is sponsored by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) and is meant to offer university students an opportunity to solve complex hydropower challenges, build industry connections, explore career connections, and obtain a greater knowledge of hydropower’s potential in the United States. For this year’s competition, our team investigated a potential in-conduit hydropower site in California. Our work included creating a design package for a crossflow turbine related to our selected site and completing the community connections challenge. We also completed a siting and design report, community connections report, design and siting …

Clipped - A Clipless Bike Grip System, Colin P. Root, Jay Vaughan, Austin Mills, Oscar Weir

Mechanical Engineering

This bike grip system works by connecting a magnetic brace to magnetic pucks installed on handlebars to secure the rider. The brace is affixed inside a glove and connects to two retractable pucks to secure a rider using magnetic force only.

Process Improvement For Thermal Barrier Coating Masking Applications, Katherine Meezan, Aiden Senn, Saksham Giri, Katelyn Perez

Mechanical Engineering

Solar Turbines, a gas turbine manufacturer, needs a more efficient method to prevent the application of a thermal barrier coating (TBC) to select areas of their combustion liners during manufacturing. Currently, the process is labor, material, and time intensive: reusable masking tools should increase the efficiency of the TBC process.

This project is sponsored in full by Solar Turbines, and is under the guidance and administration of three Solar Turbines engineers: Chris Noone, Rick Rogers, and Carson Roff. The project is mentored by Cal Poly senior design Coach, Rick Lasko. This project will be completed by a team of four …

Semi-Automated Wine Case Palletizer, Ashley A. Corona, Joshan Darji, Russell Williams, Brett Beaudoin

Mechanical Engineering

The Semi-Automated Wine Case Palletizer project was sponsored by Saucelito Canyon Winery to reduce the physical demands of manually palletizing wine cases during bottling operations.

Using customer requirements developed through sponsor meetings and observations, the team designed, manufactured, and tested a semi-automated palletizing system consisting of a rotating carousel platform, pneumatic scissor-lift assembly, airbag jack, and forklift-compatible base. The design allows operators to maintain an ergonomic working height while accessing all pallet locations from a single position.

Engineering analyses, including finite element, fatigue, and buckling analyses, verified the structural integrity of the design. Prototype testing confirmed successful operation of the …

Me3328 Combined Loading Beam Bending Lab, Alejandro Islas, Viswesh Vancheeswaran, Owen Spencer, Henry Andrews

Mechanical Engineering

Serving as a new laboratory experiment for ME 3328 (Design for Strength & Stiffness), strain gauges were adhered, wired, and calibrated on a cantilever beam lab apparatus capable of undergoing pure bending, pure torsion, and combined bending.

Design And Evaluation Of An Open-Source Ac/Dc Power Converter For Microgrid Applications, Ryan J. Rayos

Master's Theses

This thesis presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of an open-source bidirectional power conversion platform intended for microgrid applications. As distributed energy resources, battery storage systems, and hybrid AC/DC architectures continue to increase in adoption, there is a growing demand for flexible, low-cost, and programmable power electronic platforms capable of interfacing between DC and AC subsystems. Existing commercial solutions are often proprietary and expensive, limiting their accessibility for educational, research, and rapid prototyping applications. This work expands upon the existing open-source Atinverter platform by increasing its operating voltage capability, integrating bidirectional power flow, and implementing telemetry systems suitable for microgrid …

Integration Of Robotic Arm And Conveyor With Programmable Logic Controller, Drake A. Small

Master's Theses

To meet new curriculum demands brought on by Cal Poly's upcoming switch to semesters, a new, cross-disciplinary lab module was developed for EE 435 (Industrial Power Control and Automation). The module emphasizes career-applicable skills, preparing students for the field of controls engineering within the manufacturing industry. These skills include robotic control, computer networking and configuration, and embedded systems. The work focused on integrating a collaborative robot arm to pick-and-place boxes on a conveyor. A myCobot 320 Pi and an Ultimation Powered Roller MDR Conveyor were integrated with the existing PLC system using Modbus RTU and EtherNet/IP communication protocols, respectively. A …

Effects Of Atmospheric Drag On Angles-Only Initial Relative Orbit Determination Accuracy In Low Earth Orbit, Sydney Walsh

Master's Theses

Growing congestion in low Earth orbit is increasing the demand for effective space situational awareness, straining ground station capabilities. Space-based relative orbit determination offers an alternative, using line-of-sight angle measurements from a chaser spacecraft to estimate a target spacecraft's orbit. This research focuses on angles-only initial relative orbit determination (IROD), where no prior target state knowledge is assumed. It investigates how IROD solution accuracy is affected by differential atmospheric drag between the chaser and target spacecraft. A nonlinear batch least squares filter is designed to estimate the target's initial state, which is compared against a truth solution. It was found …

Teaching Multi-Core Architecture: Design And Implementation Of A Cache-Coherent Cpu For Undergraduate Education, Isaac R. Lake

Master's Theses

Modern computing has relied on multicore processors for high performance for nearly two decades, yet undergraduate computer engineering curricula often provide limited exposure to parallel hardware architectures and their design challenges. This thesis presents the design of CPE 433, a course that extends the pipelined and cached OTTER CPU developed in CPE 233 and CPE 333 into a multicore processor capable of running parallel workloads. The thesis documents the architectural changes required to adapt the verified single-core design into a multicore system, including MMIO-based interrupt support, a shared cache hierarchy with cache-coherence mechanisms, and clock-gated modules. It further presents a …

Implementation Of A Line-Scan Camera Triangulation Sensor For A Ball Balancer, Jackson R. Mclaughlin

Master's Theses

Ball Balancer or Ball on Plate systems are used for education and research in control theory. These consist of a plate which can be actively tilted, with a ball rolling on the surface. Students are challenged to model the dynamics of the system and implement a control loop which is capable of stabilizing the ball by actuating the plate.  The mechatronics group at Cal Poly is developing hardware for one of these ball-balancer systems, for future use in the Mechanical Engineering curriculum.

The position of the ball relative to the plate must be measured in order to control and stabilize …

Boundary Influence In Truncated Groundwater Models: Reconstructing A Local-Scale Modflow Model From A Consultant-Developed Regional Model In The Monterey Subbasin, Bruce K. Liscomb

Master's Theses

Regional groundwater models built by consultants contain valuable calibrated frameworks but are often too large and complex for repeated local-scale analysis. Rather than rebuilding an entirely new smaller model, this study truncates the existing consultant-built regional model of the Monterey Subbasin, preserving the original grid structure and parameter framework while reducing the active domain to a manageable size for planning-level use. A key finding is that boundary-condition representation exerted a dominant influence on simulated groundwater behavior within the truncated domain, highlighting that truncation is a structural decision that meaningfully affects how the model responds. Model performance was evaluated two ways. …

Trust And Pre-Employment Background Checks When Onboarding And Maintaining Information Security And Cybersecurity Staff, Stanley Mierzwa

Center for Cybersecurity

The realm of trust is broad and can include many facets that are difficult to capture and catalog. In relation to the work roles of information security and cybersecurity, the intersection of trust in human resource management is critical and an evolving area within most modern organizations, in almost any sector, and of any size. A foundational element of trust is fundamental to effective mission and work roles in information security and cybersecurity, as well as to every employee tasked with contributing to the security of an organization’s assets. This chapter will include sections on the role trust can and …

Stock Market Analysis And Volatility Behavior During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Manoj Venkatachalaiah, Soon Leong Yeap, Salman Ahmed Lnu, Sangwhan Cha

Harrisburg University Other Works

This report outlines the structural design, cloud implementation, and analytical findings of a scalable Big Data architecture deployed on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The primary objective is to investigate the macroeconomic and microeconomic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on global equities, focusing on two dominant digital business models: online retail/cloud computing (Amazon, Inc. - AMZN) and subscription-based digital streaming entertainment (Netflix, Inc. - NFLX). Through a serverless orchestration pipeline leveraging GCP Cloud Run, automated workflows fetched and blended high-velocity epidemiological metrics alongside daily financial asset layers. Data transformations and parallel analytical calculations were executed utilizing Apache Beam pipelines inside …

Physics-Informed Machine Learning-Aided Framework For Entrainment Fraction In Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Annular Flow, Anadi Mondal, Subash L. Sharma

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The liquid film flow rate or droplet flow rate in annular flow is determined by a parameter known as the entrainment fraction. Conventional empirical correlations are commonly employed for predicting the entrainment fraction; however, their applicability is often restricted to specific operating conditions and working fluids. Recently, a few machine learning (ML) models have been developed to achieve better accuracy in entrainment fraction prediction. However, these models are completely data-driven, meaning they are good for prediction in the interpolated domain, but exhibit limited generalization capability in the extrapolated domain. To address this limitation, a physics-informed machine learning-aided framework (PIMLAF), combining …

A Performance-Weighted Environmental Assessment Of Ultra-High-Volume Fly Ash Substitution In Portland Cement Concrete, Youngguk Seo, M.A. Karim, Teddy Tzvetkov, Joshua Hardy

Faculty Articles

Fly ash substitution for cement in Portland cement concrete (PCC) has been regarded as a sustainable solution, but its widespread application remains constrained by concerns over mechanical performance and durability of PCC, especially at higher replacement rates. This study evaluates PCC mixes incorporating fly ash Type C (FA-C) or Type F (FA-F) across cement replacement rates from 10% to 90%, tracking fresh-state workability, compressive strength, and surface electrical resistivity at 7, 14, and 28 curing days. A process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) with the TRACI 2.1 method quantified global warming potential (GWP, kg CO₂/m³) under a …

The Effects Of Carbon-Fiber Plates And Peba-Based Midsole Foam In Running Shoes On Lower-Limb Joint Kinetics And Kinematics In Recreational Female Runners, Jordan M. Allen

Master's Theses

The recent increase in long-distance running participation and the rapid advancement in footwear technology have created a need for research on injury prevention in this growing population of recreational runners. When “super shoes” were first introduced to the running scene, they caught the attention of runners worldwide with the rapid improvement in marathon performance [1]. Today, every major running brand offers its own version of a super shoe, each incorporating a carbon-fiber plate and PEBA-based midsole foam. While previous studies have shown the performance benefits of these shoes, a gap remains in the literature regarding how they impact knee, hip, …

From Ports To Projects: Estimating The Impact Of Supply Chain Volatility And Trade Policy Changes On Construction Material Prices, Ahmed Shiha, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Construction material markets are often reliant on imported commodities. Import tariffs and temporary trade barriers disrupt supply chains, presenting stakeholders with uncertainties regarding how such disruption impacts construction material prices. Despite the plethora of research efforts that examine the effects of economic conditions on construction material prices, the impacts of the import quantities remain understudied. This paper fills this knowledge gap using a multistep methodology. First, the prices of major construction materials and the quantities of the relevant imported commodities are retrieved. Second, the stability of their historical trends was assessed using econometrics-based tests. Third, a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag …

Electric Vehicle Charging Station Project, Fangling Zhu

2026 Spring Reports (Terre Haute)

The electronic vehicle (EV) charging station project was developed through a partnership between BUS 205 Business Statistics at Indiana State University and the City of Terre Haute as part of the Sustainable Cities Program. The city’s goal for this project is associated with the Theme: resilient infrastructure. The strategy RI-1 is to create a more resilient power grid. Terre Haute, aiming to advance sustainability and reduce emissions amidst growing EV adoption, faces challenges of limited charging infrastructure. Students work in four different groups and explore the optimization location for EV charging stations in the City of Terre Haute. The students …

Simulation Of Powder Spreading For Metal Additive Manufacturing, Florence Duff

Master's Theses

The powder recoating process for Laser Powder Bed Fusion requires iterative experimentation to develop the correct process parameters that will result in high quality parts. There currently lacks good spread quality metrics and models for optimizing spread quality. A machine that simulates the powder spreading process was built to streamline the process of selecting process parameters for specific types of powders without having to operate the full laser system. The parameters investigated were the layer thickness and spreading speed. The response variables were metrics developed to assess spread quality: the percentage of the build plate covered by powder and the …

Evaluating Design Choices For Gpu-Accelerated Finite-Difference Time-Domain Simulation On Resource-Constrained Devices, Joel Manesh

Master's Theses

The Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method is a numerical technique for solving partial differential equations. It was first developed to solve Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetic wave propagation and has since been extended to model other physical phenomena governed by wave propagation. Because the FDTD method is data-parallel, it is well-suited for GPU acceleration; modern FDTD-based simulations run offline on large GPU clusters. There is, however, very little research on running FDTD on resource-constrained embedded GPUs, which are increasingly popular for real-time applications.

This thesis explores a CUDA-based FDTD solver for the 3D wave equation on the Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano. This …

Reinforced Concrete Design Fundamentals, Belen Stephanie Martinez Espinoza, Estevan Jacob Perez

Architectural Engineering

Hispanic workers make up a large and growing portion of the construction workforce in the United States; particularly in California, the percentage of construction workers who are Hispanic is estimated to be about 55% as of 2021 (Elkins). Many of these workers are Spanish-speaking, yet there is still a gap between technical engineering design and what is understood and applied in the field. One major reason for this gap is the lack of clear bilingual resources. To bridge the gap, a 48-page bilingual booklet titled Reinforced Concrete Design Fundamentals (Fundamentos del Diseño de Concreto Reforzado in Spanish) was created. This …

Design And Construction Of Caed Support Shop Steel Fence On Existing Cmu Wall, Jared Gustavo Martinez, Agustin Dominguez Jimenez

Architectural Engineering

This project involved the design, testing, fabrication, and construction of a new steel fence system for the CAED support shop at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The fence was designed to attach to an existing CMU wall and serve as a future attachment point for a removable shade canopy system. Experimental testing was performed on multiple turnbuckles to establish a conservative design load for the structural design of the fence posts, baseplates, welds, and anchorage connections. In addition to meeting structural requirements, the project incorporated architectural elements inspired by the original fence and surrounding CAED shop environment. The …

Tanzania Mbesese Initiative 2026, June Ezzell, Sam Liebman, Noah Beyer, Kate Hamilton, Luke Vollert, Kylee Borgen, Cody Balazs, Meg Mclaughlin

Architectural Engineering

The Tanzania Mbesese Initiative 2026 Senior Project supports a multi-year design-build effort to establish the Same Polytechnic College in Same, Tanzania. This community faces high poverty levels and limited access to higher education, necessitating sustainable infrastructure to support tertiary education. To prepare for the upcoming July phase of construction, an eight-student Architectural Engineering team designed three practical and resilient structures: a Shade Structure, a Water Collection Structure, and a Reusable Scaffolding system. The final design applied structural analysis, modeling, and hand-tool fabrication practice to balance material efficiency with long-term structural durability. The deliverables provide comprehensive construction documentation, complete material takeoffs, …

Design And Implementation Of A Honeycomb Damping System For The 2026 Eeri Seismic Design Competition, Vera Nguyen, Lauryn Wojcik

Architectural Engineering

The authors of this report were a part of the 2026 Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) chapter at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. In July 2026, they will travel to Portland, Oregon with 12 students to compete in the Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition hosted by EERI. The competition required teams to develop a comprehensive structural design proposal that included computer-based modeling and analysis, construction of three physical models, and the preparation of both a technical poster and oral presentation for a proposed high-rise building located in Portland, Oregon. Cal Poly’s “Illahee Tower” was designed with an emphasis on …

Concrete And Masonry Code (Beams), Michael Alexander Simas Rocha

Architectural Engineering

This report only covers the beam design of the code that was written. The end goal of this project is to write code for concrete and masonry following what was taught in the lecture classes. This project is acting as a foundation for the end goal of a program that can compete with SAP2000, ETABS, RISA, and others. One final goal is to have the print out have the look and feel of having been done by hand. While coding; several factors were recorded including time spent coding, debugging, and then to do three problems by hand vs how long …

Evaluation Of Laser Doppler Flowmetry And Transillumination Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging To Measure Blood Flow Change In Ischemia Mouse Hindlimb Models, Simon Park

Master's Theses

Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), caused by plaque buildup and narrowing of the arteries, reduces blood flow to the extremities. Promoting collateral arteriogenesis can help redirect blood flow. However, simple growth of collaterals may not be enough to reverse PAD. Instead, the ability for the collaterals to vasodilate and control blood flow is important, meaning assessing collateral function is important for the arteriogenesis assesment. Although microscopy techniques can measure vasodilation, contrast limitations in larger vessels such as collaterals make blood flow measurements difficult. Techniques such as ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can measure blood flow but have limitations with cost …

Early Dementia Tracking Utilizing Virtual Reality, Gabriel Deguzman, Manuel Hernandez, Ryan Iglesias, Jose Ornelas

General Engineering

This project aims to create a simulation in virtual reality that replicates an activity that older adults are familiar with and presents an objective for the user to complete. The simulation will monitor the user’s cognitive functions based on their performance. The functionality of the designed program includes, but is not limited to: continuous tracking of cognitive behavior, skipped steps, and completion times. The program will take in relevant data and provide results on the monitored tasks and give the user a conclusion for further action. The application of this simulation will not be used as a medical device or …

Polysaber: A Custom Reactive Lightsaber Soundboard, Pedro B. Medeiros

Computer Engineering

The PolySaber project was developed as a custom reactive lightsaber control system built as a fully custom PCB design. The purpose of the project was to create a lower-cost and more customizable alternative to commercially available lightsaber soundboards while simultaneously providing hands-on experience in PCB design, embedded systems development, and hardware integration. Commercial lightsaber soundboards are expensive, proprietary, and difficult for hobbyists to customize. The PolySaber project addresses this by creating a modifiable hardware platform built around the ESP32 microcontroller. The system supports programmable firmware, RGB NeoPixel blade control, motion sensing, reactive swing and clash effects, onboard audio amplification, and …

Wind Power Turbine Pitching, Sierra Bindseil, Olivia Hoffsis, Izik Hingeley, Tucker Donahue

Mechanical Engineering

It is crucial that wind turbines are able to control the angle of their blades relative to the wind for optimal performance, efficiency, and safety [1]. This project will design a pitching mechanism for the Cal Poly Wind Power turbine that will compete in the Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC). Currently, for full scale wind turbines, the industry standard design includes the pitch of each blade being controlled by its own individual motor [2]. Because of the smaller scale of Cal Poly Wind Power’s turbine, along with power usage constraints, three separate motors are not a practical approach. Cal Poly Wind …

Cal Poly Fluid Powered Vehicle Challenge 2025/2026, Ethan Malachi Nejame Zeiset, Christian Anthony Cuamani, Daniel Chacon-Bizarro, Marcus Minera, Bradley Hansell

Mechanical Engineering

In this Final Design Report, the Cal Poly Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge Contending Team competed in Sun Hydraulics’ 2026 Fluid Powered Vehicle Challenge. The objective of the competition is to expose college students to the fluid power sector, the “hidden giant” of the engineering industry. Specifically, student teams are tasked with the development of a human-powered, fluid-driven vehicle for use in various competitive settings. The team prioritized the optimization of an existing prototype for simplicity, ease of maintenance, and reliability during the competition. The existing prototype exhibited issues related to the main frame’s deflection under load, a lack of gear …