Engineering Commons^™

Laboratory Manual For Engineering Electronics, Sandip Das, Walter Thain, Sheila Hill

Engineering Open Textbooks

The primary objective of this project was to improve the laboratory manuals and associated ancillary learning resources for the junior-level course, Engineering Electronics (EE3401), which is a required course for students in three different degree programs at Kennesaw State University – Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics Engineering, and Computer Engineering.

In this project, we have developed and transformed the previous lab manuals, as well as added new learning materials. We have included detailed technical instructions within the lab manuals, revised the contents for improved readability, implemented coherent formatting across all manuals, introduced interactive links as necessary, developed and integrated pre-lab exercises, created …

Bs News July/August

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Engineering Students’ Perceptions Of Belongingness In Civil Engineering, Lisa Benson, Candice Bolding, Jennifer Harper Ogle, Catherine Mcgough Spence, Joseph Murphy, Rachel Lanning

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

Prior research shows that engineering students with low feelings of belongingness tend to switch to non-technical majors. With the understanding that aspects of student motivation, identity, and personality, as well as their academic performance, affect their sense of community in engineering, this study seeks to assess these student attributes over time. The context for this study is a single civil engineering program that is undergoing both curricular and cultural changes as part of an NSF-funded project. The data and findings presented here are part of a larger study of how student attitudes and beliefs change during their experiences in a …

Dry River Watershed Valuation And Management Plan, Julia Hutchens

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Water quality has become a major environmental and human welfare concern in the world today, it’s no longer just for developing countries. There have been many incidences in the US of health problems related to water quality and a shortage of water. The City of Harrisonburg and the surrounding community also have a need for a well-developed watershed management plan. The focus of this study will be the Dry River because that is a main source of the city’s water. The Dry River watershed is threatened by illegal dumping, erosion from primitive roads and future road building sedimentation, a lack …

How Moisture Content Levels And Packing Density In Soil Affect Crude Oil Spreads, Shaylin N. Williams

Venture: The University of Mississippi Undergraduate Research Journal

Crude oil spills are one of the most destructive disasters that can occur, and they are extremely difficult to recover from. Many studies focus on what can be done to clean these crude oil spills, but more research should be focused on means of prevention. Currently, very little is known about how the moisture content levels and the packing efficiency of soil can affect an oil spill. These two factors alone can offer a variety of information to environmental agencies, manufacturers, and refineries. Through utilization of a chemical engineering lab, a recording mechanism, and ImagePro software, data was collected and …

High Strollers, Braeden Hammond, Morley Perrin, Reid Bartels, Juan Rodriguez

Mechanical Engineering

This report documents the final product of Jonathon’s new lightweight stroller. The Mechanical Engineering team from Cal Poly, High Strollers, began the project to create a lightweight stroller for the project sponsor, Nina Aguayo, and her son, Jonathon Aguayo, in Fall of 2018. Jonathon is diagnosed with Delayed Brain Development and Hypotonia with some characteristics of Cerebral Palsy. He has a 50lb high intensity stroller to go to and from school. Mrs. Aguayo needed a stroller that is easier to transport while still meeting all of Jonathon’s needs. The re-designed stroller will make leisurely outings for Mrs. Aguayo and Jonathon …

Bs News May/June

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

University Of Rhode Island Course Information Assistant, Daniel Gauthier

Senior Honors Projects

Personal voice-interactive systems have become ubiquitous in daily life. There are many of these digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. The chances are high you have access to one right now. This technology has reached a point where the context of a conversation can be maintained, which is a vast improvement over earlier technology. Interactions without conversational context can limit interactions greatly and this was the case for previous digital assistants. Every time someone would say something to an assistant, it was like they were constantly changing operators on a customer service line. The assistants can now …

On-Demand Label Production, Robert A. Zimmerman

Master's Theses

The production and approval process for the various labels used in clinical trials wastes significant time and resources through the need to outsource label production or rely on large reams of pre-cut label stock for each revision throughout the process. An in-house, on-demand label printing and cutting system is a potential remedy to this waste. Previous work by Cheadle et al. resulted in a functional electomechanical prototype of the label cutting aspect of this research, capable of rudimentary linear cuts. In this continued research, emphasis was placed on improved label cutting capabilities and creating PC control software for label design. …

Smart Flow Facility Analysis, Chantal Ann George, Pete Suktankar, Eric Wilson, Matthew Geiger

Senior Design Project For Engineers

The SMART Flow Design Team has been tasked in providing a physical layout for a single building facility used to consolidate three separate business units. The objective for the new facility will be to manufacture, receive, ship, and store the company's finished products. When designing the physical layout, the team must take into consideration stable and seasonal business volumes, current and future volume demand growth, designated inbound, outbound, and storage areas, and product turn rates. All specifications must be met while determining an efficient flow of goods. The team has designed indoor and outdoor layouts using Microsoft Visio, performed various …

Soundboard: Planar Tracking For Instrument Control, Peter O'Sullivan

ENGS 86 Independent Projects (AB Students)

The Soundboard is the central component of Syrinx, a synthesizer instrument invented by Spencer Topel. A generated audio signal is transduced through the Soundboard, and by manually adjusting the positioning of its top metal plane, the user can manipulate the encased soundwaves before they are transduced back into a signal and output. My task for this project was to add controller functionality to the Soundboard component by implementing control voltages that carry information about its planar tilt, yaw, and altitude. These voltages can be used to modulate various digital parameters and further affect the sonic output of the instrument. Further, …

2019 Ieee Southeastcon Hardware Competition: A Systems Engineering Approach, Emily Sage

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Huntsville section invites college students to participate in their annual SoutheastCon Conference. Western Kentucky University sends a team of engineering students to the hardware competition, an opportunity for students to design and build autonomous robots. The 2019 hardware competition called for students to develop a robot that could collect and sort debris by color. This thesis outlines the project lifecycle of the WKU 2019 SoutheastCon robot with an emphasis on implemented systems engineering tools and techniques. Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach to project management that focuses on treating the overall project …

Leaders Like Me, Kyle F. Trenshaw, Nir Aish, Elif Miskioglu, Philip Asare

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

The Workshop Program at the University of Rochester infuses collaborative learning into a variety of introductory STEM and non-STEM courses through small, weekly, peer-led problem solving sessions called "Workshops." Decades of data from these Workshops indicate that 1) African American, Black, Hispanic, and Latinx students are less likely to attend them than White and Asian students and 2) that every additional Workshop students attend improves their final course grades, even if they only miss a single Workshop out of the 13 or 14 that are offered each semester. To address this situation, the UR Workshop Program has partnered with the …

Asme Student Design Competition, Marcus Todd

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

For the completion of my capstone project with the Western Kentucky University Honors College, the following document details my experience with the American Society of Mechanical Engineer (ASME) Student Design Competition. This project was completed in a two semester sequence through working with a team of four. One semester focusing primarily on the design and the other on fabrication and evaluation. The 2019 ASME competition was the Pick and Place Race. In this event, 46 teams were challenged to design and construct a device having the ability to pick up balls of varying size. Both the design and assembly process …

Civil Engineering Design Of Cornhusker Council's Outdoor Education Center, Kelly Weiler

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

A team of geotechnical, structural, hydraulic, environmental, and transportation experts collaborated to provide engineering solutions to the Cornhusker Council in an effort to solve the current problems facing their Outdoor Education Center. This results of this project provided the structural design of three bridges on the property, transportation plans for two parking lots and roadway design, geotechnical recommendations for soil testing and erosion prevention, and an environmental and hydraulic analysis of the property. A major challenge in the design of this project is the consideration of the dangers and regulations that accompany the floodway and floodplain regions on site. Various …

Mechanisims Of Vortex Oscillation In A Fluidic Flow Meter, Mohammed Al-Muqbel, Peshala Gamage

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

Flow meters are devices capable of measuring the amount of fluid transported through piping networks. Example applications include accurate measurements of flow in chemical processing plants and fluid consumption by end-users (e.g. water, fuel, natural gas, etc.) by customers, which is a core issue in fluid-handling engineering. Some flow meters contain no moving parts (Royle and Boucher 1972), which is desirable since moving parts wear over time, leading to compromised meter accuracy. The meter investigated in this study contains no moving parts, and its operation relies on oscillations induced by the fluid flow through the meter. In this project, the …

Investigating The Impact Of Taper And Aspect Ratio On A Stalling Wing Using A Corrected Vortex Lattice Method, Ryan Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The advent of new technologies such as eVTOL vehicles is exciting. The development of fast aerodynamics models incorporating stall is one small step on the road to realizing such concepts by improving the speed of design optimization algorithms. To this end, a modified vortex lattice model was developed based on one reported by dos Santos and Marques [4]. The model was validated against experimental data found in the literature. Making use of its stall capabilities, a sample study was performed to test for any coupling effect between aspect ratio and taper ratio. This was done by calculating the lift curve …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Roger Williams University Announces 11th President 02-13-2019, Ed Fitzpatrick

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Feed Control: Composite Recycle, Rosy Perez

All Undergraduate Projects

The Boeing Company gave Central Washington University an opportunity for students to research and come up with an idea to reduce costs and landfill waste caused by the trimmings from the 777x composite wing pieces. The engineering and manufacturing for this project is about transporting composite material through to the delamination and chipper process. The delamination process uses a ram to press two claw shaped devices together that bends and deforms the material in opposite directions. The chipper process uses counter rotating saw blades spaced 1/8” apart to produce small shredded material. It is important for this newly designed feed …

R/C Mini Baja: Drivetrain, Kyle Aitken

All Undergraduate Projects

A device is needed that can power the back wheels of R/C car and allow it to drive smoothly. This drivetrain also has to transmit power to the axles in an acceptable height range to comply with the frame and suspension. The project was supported by a team member who designed the frame and suspension. The design of this project consists of two sub-assemblies that make up the drive train assembly. The transmission assembly uses gears to convert the rotational speed from the motor to the drive shaft. The gearbox assembly also uses gears and converts the rotational speed from …

Design, Control, And Optimization Of Robots With Advanced Energy Regenerative Drive Systems, Poya Khalaf

ETD Archive

We investigate the control and optimization of robots with ultracapacitor based regenerative drive systems. A subset of the robot joints are conventional, in the sense that external power is used for actuation. Other joints are energetically self-contained passive systems that use ultracapacitors for energy storage. An electrical interconnection known as the star configuration is considered for the regenerative drives that allows for direct electric energy redistribution among joints, and enables higher energy utilization efficiencies. A semi-active virtual control strategy is used to achieve control objectives. We find closed-form expressions for the optimal robot and actuator parameters (link lengths, gear ratios, …

Stair Climbing Hand Truck, James Mcpherson

All Undergraduate Projects

Abstract

Getting a heavy object up a flight of stairs usually requires a team of two or more people. Even with a team of people, the task is often still difficult, dangerous, and possibly insurmountable by one person. This problem is especially prevalent in for those who are moving into apartment complexes. Most apartment complexes have many buildings with two or more floors of living quarters, and elevators are often missing. This project sought to offer a solution to this problem. The solution in question; a motorized hand-truck with 2, trigonal planar pinwheels in place of the stock wheels. The …

Autojack - Hydraulic Powertrain System, Tyce Vu

All Undergraduate Projects

A primary problem for mechanics and automotive enthusiasts is the risk associated with lifting and securing a vehicle with conventional jack stands. Often times, improper jack-stand installation results in the vehicle collapsing unexpectedly, causing injury and/or death. This problem can be minimized through the application of a newly re-designed vehicle lifting system. The conventional method for lifting cars is time consuming and can be unsafe in many circumstances. A better, safer, and more efficient lift design was needed; the AutoJack. The approach of the AutoJack design was entirely focused on the safety of lifting a vehicle. Safety was improved by …

Strategic Decision Facilitation: An Exploration Of Alternative Anchoring And Scale Distortion Optimization In Multi-Attribute Group Decision Making, Joseph Patrick Kristbaum

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Choosing between alternatives, regardless of the decision context in an organizational group setting is a difficult task. The integrity of the decision is under constant scrutiny and rarely are we ever able to characterize the magnitude of that with which we are consciously or subconsciously concerned: personal bias. This leads to long, drawn out timelines and loosely trusted decisions. This dissertation research focuses on using a traditionally, negatively viewed anchoring bias strategically in a series of experiments with a hypothesis that it can be used to positively reduce personal biases such as preference bias and judgement rooted in ambiguous or …

"Mentoring Is Ethical, Right?": Women Graduate Students And Faculty In Science And Engineering Speak Out, Laura Gelles, Idalis Villanueva, Marialuisa Di Stefano

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

The relationship between graduate students and their research advisors within academia is pivotal to the development and success of the research enterprise. Graduate students rely on their faculty advisor to be a source of information, a departmental negotiator, and a role model to guide their professional and ethical behavior. However, if an advisor does not fully recognize a student’s best interest or they are unaware of how to be an “ethical mentor”, they may overlook the unique social capital of the graduate student (e.g., background, culture) and jeopardize the research relationship. This work aims to explore how women graduate students …

Exploring Engineering Club, Samantha Corey, Stephen Yaghmour

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

Exploring Engineering Club provides an introduction to a variety of engineering problems and piques the students’ interest in engineering by accompanying the information with hands-on problem solving activities mainly related to structural engineering. The activities will often be done in teams which will teach good teamwork skills, as well as problem solving and critical thinking.

Characterization Of In-Vivo Damage In Implantable Cardiac Devices And The Lead Residual Properties, Anmar Mahdi Salih

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Approximately, 92.1 million patients in the US suffer from cardiovascular diseases with an estimated healthcare cost of over $300 billion; out of which at least one million patients have Cardiac Implantable Electronics Devices (CIED). CIED represented by pacemakers, Implantable Cardioversion Defibrillator (ICD), and Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT) are exposed to in-vivo damage. These damages are complex and composed on multiple levels and present challenges while assessing their combined extent. Since 2004, more than one hundred recalls were reported for cardiac devices. ICD devices had the majority with 40.8% recalls, pacemaker recall percentage was 14.5%, CRT recall percentage was12.7%, leads recalls …

Robust Impedance Control Of A Four Degree Of Freedom Exercise Robot, Santino Joseph Bianco

ETD Archive

The CSU 4OptimX exercise robot provides a platform for future research into advanced exercise and rehabilitation. The robot and its control system will autonomously modify reference trajectories and impedances on the basis of an optimization criterion and physiological feedback. To achieve this goal, a robust impedance control system with trajectory tracking must be implemented as the foundational control scheme. Two control laws will be compared, sliding mode and H-infinity control. The above robust control laws are combined with underlying impedance control laws to overcome uncertain plant model parameters and disturbance anomalies affecting the input signal. The sliding mode control law …

Assessing The Grit And Mindset Of Incoming Engineering Students With An Emphasis On Gender, Inês Direito, Shannon Chance, Emanuela Tilley, John E. Mitchell

Conference papers

Engineering programs can be very demanding, particularly in the first years where students encounter new forms of highly challenging coursework. To better prepare and support students, educators must acknowledge non-academic factors, such as the role of self-beliefs and personal attributes. Education research suggests that students are more likely to give up and disengage from their studies when they lack grit or assume a fixed mindset. Previous studies suggest that female students are generally grittier but less confident when compared to male students. This paper presents the initial work of an ongoing study to explore self-confidence and motivations to study engineering …