Engineering Commons^™

Accelerating Shock-Driven Reactions In Metal Nanocomposites, Siva Kumar Valluri, Edward L. Dreizin, Dana D. Dlott

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Metal powders are sought as energetic additives to conventional explosives. However, due to their sluggish reaction kinetics with external gaseous oxidizers, pure metals are replaced with metallic composites with intimately mixed condensed phase oxidizers prepared by arrested reactive milling (ARM). Such composites can be initiated by non-thermal, mechanical means; through shear mixing of fuel and oxidizer under a shock compressive load. Since the ARM preparatory technique allows for tuning multiple powder attributes such as fuel/oxidizer of interest, their degree of mixing, amount of oxidizer, particle porosity, among others, a parametric study is crucial in identifying suitable traits for fast reactions …

12.09.2024 Orsp Connect, Liz Williamson

ORED Newsletter

Employee Profiles

In Person Account Reconciliation and Tableau Training

NSF Proposals with Consultant or Professional Services

Mems 411: Electrostatic Precipitator Design For Washu Racing Composites Team, Robert J. Wild, Takato Muro, Jackson Ford, David Wiggin

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The objective of this paper is to develop an effective method to remove carbon fiber particulates from the air in the WashU Racing garage using electrostatic precipitation.

Mems 411: Talking Goniometer, Jeffrey Reinhold, Matthew Ren, Corin Riahi, Moises Rodriguez

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Our project is about designing a goniometer that will aid Rachel Apter, an occupational therapy graduate student, more easily determine the angles created by limbs bending about a joint. A goniometer is essentially a protractor designed to affix its base arm to a stationary limb and it’s rotating arm to a moving limb. The moving arm follows the moving limb, measuring the coupled limb’s range of motion. The main complaint centering around goniometers is that they are hard to read due to the small tick marks that indicate the angle. To fix this problem, the goniometer will be edited to …

Mems 411: The Ball Bearing Sorter Group N, Jack Zhao, Anri Cifuentes, Shawn Xiong, Richard Li

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The challenge was to design and develop an automated device capable of sorting and packaging six types of ball bearings—varying in size (1/4 inch and 1/2 inch) and material (stainless steel, brass, and nylon). The device needed to meet strict performance and design constraints, including fitting within a compact 20x20x20-inch footprint, weighing no more than 15 pounds, and sorting bearings with high speed and accuracy.

This problem represents a practical scenario in automated manufacturing, where efficient and precise sorting is crucial for streamlining assembly line operations. The solution required integrating innovative engineering mechanisms, such as size differentiation, material separation, and …

Mems 411: Mailbox Assistant, Peter Scholl, Benjamin Cortes, Garbiel Arcas, Colin Zeiss

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Oftentimes elderly people struggle with reaching into their curbside mailbox from their car, especially if the mail is pushed all the way to the back. With the Mailbox Assistant, sore shoulders can be saved through a drawer that slides out from the mailbox. This modification can be made to any mailbox without altering the outside appearance thus keeping it within HOA standards.

Mems 411: Hydroponic Gardening System, Tiger Lu, Aj Shanahan, Jaquelin Guzman, Brandon Lacy

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report summarizes the engineering design process undertaken for the development of a hydroponic gardening system. The project began with selecting a concept, as a team, we decided to focus on designing a system tailored to community gardening needs. The report is organized into five main sections: Problem Understanding, Concept Generation, Concept Selection, Concept Embodiment, and Design Refinement. In the Problem Understanding phase, the team conducted extensive research on patents, codes and standards, user needs, design metrics, and project management. This foundational research was critical to ensure all aspects were considered before beginning the building process. User needs were identified …

Mems 411: Diving Surface Breaker, Chandler Gartner, Freddy Phillips, Maya Sumra, Olivia Slemmer

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

We have been recruited by the WashU diving team to design and construct a surface breaker for the Millstone Pool so the divers can have an affordable way to stay safe while practicing dives.

Mems 411: Timed Mosquito Egg Container Design Project, Paige Warren, Witt Ciesla, Ethan Sobel

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of this project is to design and construct a device that allows for the controlled study of mosquito egg-laying behavior in response to artificial light and temperature variations. Specifically, the device will limit access to cups of standing water, which serve as egg-laying sites, to preprogrammed times of day over a 7-day period.
The device should ensure the following:

• Control Access: The container should be open and closed at predetermined intervals, allowing mosquitoes to access the cups of standing water only during these times.
• Programmability: It should be easy for a novice to specify the opening and closing …

Mems 411: Ball Bearing Sorter, Abdissa Effa, Juliet Whitehead, Ayub Shifa

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The challenge is to design and fabricate a compact device capable of autonomously sorting and transporting ball bearings of varying materials (chrome steel, brass, nylon) and sizes (¼” and ½”) into designated packaging stations. The device must operate efficiently, accurately, and within the constraints of a 20x20x20-inch enclosure, meeting industrial assembly line standards of speed and precision while minimizing human intervention. It aims to address the need for high-rate sorting systems in manufacturing environments, ensuring accurate material identification and classification for streamlined operations.

Mems 411: Asme Ball Bearing Sorter, Ryan Lively, Joseph Huster, Wil Collins

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The ASME Student Design Competition focused on the design and construction of a ball bearing sorter. This ball bearing sorter must be capable of sorting 2 sizes of ball bearings, being 1/2 inch and 1/4 inch. For each size, there are 3 different bearing materials, brass, steel, and acetal plastic. The device is intended to have the bearings fed into a hopper, and then fully autonomously sort the bearings. The autonomous sorting was to transport the various bearings into 6 different packing stations, one for each size and material bearing. These packing stations must be easily removable. This design project …

Mems 411: Automated Assistive Toilet, Alex Scaff, Kenna Mcgahren, Daniel Sibley

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

How do we make toilets more accessible for all people - regardless of physical, mental, emotional impediments - while also ensuring simplicity and cost-effectiveness? Utilizing sensors, our toilet device is designed to automatically open and close the toilet lid upon approach, increasing ease of use and general hygiene of the user while being friendly to those who struggle with certain disabilities or impairments.

Mems 411: Adjustable Desk, Catryn Cattoor, Natalia Pilpil, Jamie Burgasser, Adam Wong

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design and create a desk for a special education classroom of kindergarteners to third graders. The desk needs slanting capabilities, wheel chair accessibility, raising/lower capabilities, distraction prevention capabilities, and light board capabilities. These capabilities need to be configurable for students with different needs. This desk also needs to be very durable, safe, and mobile. The main motivation for this project is the desire to provide the teacher and her students with a single, cost-effective product that is safe, easy to use, and meets their desired needs.

Mems 411: Group V Ball Bearing Sorter, Matthew Hernandez, Sean Huffert, Ethan Delair

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

After a semester of hard work, Team V is proud to unveil its finished prototype for the 2024-2025 ASME Student Design Competition. The theme of this challenge was "Assembly Line Sorting and Packaging." The goal of this challenge was to make a device able to satisfy the criteria of sorting between six different bearings of different sizing and material properties, and meeting spatial and time limitations. This device needed to be fast, accurate, compact, and able to sort in bulk. Team V feels like we have met most of these requirements with our final design prototype. For this project, a …

Mems 411: Rc Plane Mount For Cfd Validation, Jake Schwartz, Margot Jay, Ian Torres, Sam Ehrman

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Washington University in St. Louis’ Design/Build/Fly team (WashU DBF) participates in an annual international competition with over 100 teams where they create a Remote Control (RC) plane that can perform various missions. One of the difficulties in developing a plane each year is testing the forces on the plane. Currently, Ansys and XFLR5 are used to create computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models for the plane. CFD modeling simulates air flow over the plane’s wings to analyze how to optimize the aircraft’s aerodynamics. While this is a useful strategy to predict the plane’s theoretical performance, WashU DBF Technical President, Eleni Kambouris, …

Mems 411: Mini Syringe Pump, Rachel Foulk, Braxton Hart, Camilo Hernandez

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

In many research and medical settings, small amounts of liquids are dispensed using syringes. Very often, syringe pumps like those shown in the left image, are used to control the amount (i.e., flow rate) of dispensed/collected fluid. There are single- or multi-style syringe pumps; the one shown is single-style; multi-style have 2-8 parallel syringes that are all pushed/pulled at the same flow rate. However, these syringe
pumps are bulky and heavy, making them impractical for many experimental setups. Commercial alternatives include very expensive syringe pumps with remote dispensers. Furthermore, it is often necessary to have two syringe pumps operate in …

Comparing Recovery Volumes Of Steady And Unsteady Injections Into An Aquifer Storage And Recovery Well, Saeid Masoudiashtiani, Richard C. Peralta

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) can involve injecting available surface water into an unconfined aquifer and then extracting it to provide secondary water for irrigation. This study demonstrates a method for evaluating the appropriateness of steady injection versus unsteady injection for an assumed situation. In design, it can be important to affect the transient: the proportion of the injected water that would be subsequently extracted (versus that remaining in the aquifer) and the proportion within the extracted water that would be an injectate (versus ambient groundwater). These proportions can be predicted from the predicted value of an ASR well's Recovery …

Mae Enewsbrief July-Sept 2024, Department Of Mechanical And Aerospce Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Agronomic Biofortification Of Calcium In Pak Choy (Brassica Rapa Subsp. Chinensis) Via Hydroponic Nutrient Film Technique, Regina Septiani Zahro, Khavid Faozi, Zulfa Ulinnuha, Agus Sarjito

Jurnal Kultivasi

Pak choy is rich in calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, and vitamin K, all essential for health. Pak choy requires a proper balance of nutrients for optimal growth. In a hydroponic system, any imbalance in nutrient levels can negatively impact plant growth and reduce the nutritional value stored in the tissues. Selecting suitable varieties and providing appropriate calcium treatment can help increase calcium content and enhance productivity. This study aims to determine the effect of calcium concentration on growth, yield, and Ca content and the most responsive varieties to increased calcium concentration. The research design used was a Split Plot Design …

Development Of A Stable And Buffered Reference Electrode For Binary Molten Chlorides Salts, Carlos Mejia, Nicholas Christensen, Ricardo Rodriguez Ceron, Devin Rappleye

Faculty Publications

The development of stable and buffered reference electrodes (REs) is crucial for molten salt electrochemistry, particularly in pyrochemical processing, such as electrorefining. These REs must maintain a stable potential to ensure precise control over electrorefining processes by preventing unwanted shifts in the potential that could lead to impurity deposition. This study evaluated metal chlorides and metal oxides as potential candidates for REs, with their stability assessed via electrochemical methods over extended durations. While metal chloride-based REs exhibited stable potential behavior over time, their response followed the Nernst equation, leading to potential shifts with varying concentrations of oxidized species. Metal oxide-based …

Enhancing Civil Infrastructure Performance Through Lidar-Based Dynamic Monitoring And Phased-Construction Bridges, Khalid Hossam Alkady

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation aims to enhance the performance and structural integrity of civil infrastructure systems through two primary goals. The first goal is to develop and rigorously validate end-to-end frameworks for full-field monitoring of the dynamic response of civil structures via Ground-based Lidar (GBL) scanners. GBL can be employed to sample point clouds at a high sampling rate for dynamic data collection, which addresses the limitations of using contact-based sensors in structural health monitoring (SHM) applications used for early-detection of structural damage.

The second goal of this dissertation concerns the challenges associated with constructing bridges in phases, so they can remain …

Hyperspectral Imaging For Temperature Measurements Of Hot Spots In Shocked Plastic-Bonded Explosives, Dhanalakshmi Sellan, Siva Kumar Valluri, Dana D. Dlott

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Hot spots are formed when energetic microstructures are shocked, and they play a critical role in shock sensitivity. It is important to know both the time-dependent size and temperature of the hot spots, in order to generate a kinetic model to describe reaction growth in plastic-bonded explosives (PBX). Here we use a recently developed technique where PBX is fabricated in the form of a thin wafer, embedded within a transparent polymer binder, and shocked with a laser-launched flyer plate that produces pressures of about 30 GPa range. In this method, every crystal of the cyclotetramethylene-tetranitramine (HMX)-based PBX can be observed …

Nature-Derived Flame Retardant For Cotton Fabrics With Green Coconut Shells, Tarikul Islam, Abdullah Al Rakib Shikder, Md Shahabul Hossen, Md Mazbah Uddin, Md Tanvir Hossain, M. Mahbubul Bashar

Michigan Tech Publications

This study presents an eco-friendly flame-retardant solution for cellulosic fabrics using green coconut shell (GCS) extract and phytic acid (PA). Cellulosic materials are highly flammable and release harmful gases during combustion. Conventional flame retardants may pose environmental and health risks while impacting the fabric quality. GCS extract is a rich source of tannins, phosphorus, silicates, metallic salts, and oxides and is explored as a novel flame retardant (FR) for cotton fabrics. Cotton samples were pretreated with PA and then with varying concentrations of GCS extract using a padding technique. Comprehensive characterization followed, including limiting oxygen index (LOI), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), …

Decadal Climate And Landform Variables Analysis In Iraq Using Remote Sensing Datasets, Sungwon Kim, Maryam Bayatvarkeshi, Atif Muhammad Ali, Kamal Ahmed

AUIQ Technical Engineering Science

Iraq has experienced record-breaking temperatures, making it one of the hottest places on Earth. It is also ranked among the world's top five most climate-vulnerable nations. Climate change is a hazard to Iraq's people and may cause societal disintegration, instability, and displacement. Therefore, it is important to assess Iraq's decadal climate and landform variables analysis. In the present study, the Climate Hazards Center InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) data in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform from 2000 to 2022, as well as rainfall, anomaly, temperature, vegetation, and water, are used to analyse climate change in Iraq. As the land …

Field Canals Improvement Projects Duration Prediction: A Comparative Analysis Of Machine Learning Models, Hania Ghouse, Ukaegbu Chinonso Ishmael, Edgar Dario Obando-Paredes, Hashem Shafik Shakir, Ali Al-Bayaty

AUIQ Technical Engineering Science

There are several essential elements in project construction management to be studied appropriately, and priority to these elements, such as cost and duration, is predominantly interesting to be investigated. In this research, the duration of field canal improvement projects (D_FCIP) was predicted using two relatively new machine learning (ML) models - the Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline (MARS) and Extreme Learning Machine (ELM). The targeted D_FCIP was calculated using other dependent parameters, such as the length of the pipe, years of construction, the geographical zone of the network, the supplied area with water, and finally the actual cost …

In-Orbit Polymer Recyclers, Dargelys Buitrago Frías, José Muñoz González, Fon Saliki, Lamin Wright, Phuc Bui

Senior Design Project For Engineers

The International AstroTech Team proposes an innovative technology designed to revolutionize future space missions by facilitating in-space 3D printing using locally sourced materials. This cutting-edge technology focuses on developing an automated system capable of recycling polymers in space and transforming them into high-quality 3D printing filaments. By implementing this method, the technology addresses critical needs such as on-site resource utilization, sustainability, on-demand manufacturing, and resource efficiency. This approach not only reduces the dependency on Earth-supplied materials but also enhances the overall sustainability and operational flexibility of space missions. Consequently, it holds the potential to significantly advance the capabilities of space …

Air Supremacy, The Enabler Of Close Air Support Operations – An Evaluation Of Past, Present, And Future Air Campaigns., Owen Topolnicki

Senior Honors Theses

The achievement of gaining aerial supremacy, or lack thereof, is the hinge upon which Close Air Support (CAS) swings. The attainment of it enables CAS specialist aircraft, not unlike the Ju-87 Stuka or A-10 Thunderbolt II, to be exceptionally effective in their operating environment. While the lack of it, forces aircrews to pioneer new solutions either in the form of multi-role aircraft (capable of self-defense), or other innovative solutions similar to unmanned aerial systems (UAS’s), as aptly seen in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Thus, the ability of an air force to gain air supremacy and to do so quickly, …

Ai, American Politics, And Modern Warfare, Madisen Campbell

Space and Defense

As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms modern warfare, it will pose profound ethical challenges for America’s constitutional democracy.

Technological advancements in the world today, particularly the field of artificial intelligence (AI), impact the current political system in the United States. The importance of understanding and addressing the complex challenges and opportunities of incorporating AI into American politics is key to developing a profound understanding of AI in modern warfare and the implications it has for policy making in America. The need for policy makers and military leaders to receive insight on the development of AI and to develop strategic approaches for …

U.S. 5g Technology Policy: Competition Or Boycott?, Wes Ferguson, Kyle Vargus

Space and Defense

Rather than corral allies and partners across the globe into boycotting Chinese 5G telecommunication systems, U.S. officials should embrace free-and-fair trade competition against China, even in products and services where China may enjoy a technological lead.

The race for technological supremacy has emerged as a defining characteristic of the newest era of great power competition. China and the United States compete to become the dominant world power. Each side is racing to create the latest and most elite technologies to catapult themselves into the lead and give them the edge over their adversary. The fifth generation of wireless technology, called …

Atomic Assurance: Funding A Modern U.S. Test Readiness Program, Mark Tang

Space and Defense

To address intensified strategic competition with Russia and China, the United States should reinstate funding for a modern nuclear Test Readiness Program.

The U.S. has never faced the threat of two adversarial powers with nuclear arsenals that equal our own. With the emphasis on great power competition and mounting aggression by both China and Russia, the risk of conflict with either or both powers is growing. Currently, the U.S. is ill prepared for the possible existential challenge that is deterring conflict with two major nuclear peer adversaries. America’s defense strategy and approach towards the international order must change to protect …