Engineering Commons^™

The Labyrinth, Derek Nakamura, Marko Trapani, Liam Walker

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The Labyrinth is a puzzle video game meant to be experienced with a virtual reality headset. It aims to differ from typical puzzle games by being simultaneously fun, immersive, and mentally stimulating. The game consists of three unique level types, with room for further development to create more complex versions of said levels. In this document, we discuss how we developed the game environment to effectively engage the player in enjoyable and engaging problem-solving challenges. The game has been rigidly tested and play-testers were surveyed on their experiences, in order to improve the game.

The Original Beat: An Electronic Music Production System And Its Design, Eli Yale, Christian Quintero, Matt Kordonsky

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The barrier to entry in electronic music production is high. It requires expensive, complicated software, extensive knowledge of music theory and experience with sound generation. Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) are the main tools used to piece together digital sounds and produce a complete song. While these DAWs are great for music professionals, they have a steep learning curve for beginners and they must run native on a user’s computer. For a novice to begin creating music takes much more time, eort, and money than it should. We believe anyone who is interested in creating electronic music deserves a simple way …

Engineering State Turns 30 | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Utah's longest-running engineering summer camp concluded its 30th year last week.

Myhouse, Johann Espinosa, Coby Jacobson, Mike Lau, Daniel Torre

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Consumers tend to lack an understanding of the way that their electricity is priced and the way that their energy consumption impacts utility operations. In this paper, we create a program and hardware implementation that uses day-before hourly electricity pricing and efficiency modes aiming to better distribute the user’s power consumption, control the user’s peak power consumption, shave peaks at the hours where electricity costs the most, as well as reduce the user’s monthly electricity bill. Our program achieves this by optimizing the operation time of appliances such as the washer, dryer, dishwasher, HVAC, and electric vehicle charging and by …

Wasp - Wireless Analog Sensor Platform, Tyler Hack, Cole Hunter, Daniel Webber

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

WASP’s goal is to augment and eventually replace the bulky, costly, and complex data acquisition systems used for vibrational reliability tests on satellites. As a mechanism to guarantee that a spacecraft is mechanically durable and strong enough to withstand the acceleration forces experienced on the vessel during launch, companies conduct vibrational experiments on their spacecrafts by subjecting them to high G-force events. Using wired accelerometers connected to obstructive cables, the mounting process and test setups required to perform such experiments are expensive, laborious, and have the potential to generate measurement inaccuracies. We developed a low-cost, battery-powered module, designed for engineers, …

Low-Power Core Reconfiguration For Missouri S&T Reactor (Mstr), Thaqal Alhuzaymi, Ayodeji Babatunde Alajo

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Missouri University of Sciences and Technology Reactor (MSTR) is pool-type research reactor which operates up to 200 kilowatt (kW). MSTR used for training and educating nuclear engineering students at Missouri S&T. A several of nuclear researches and irradiation experiments have been conducted in MSTR for example, neutron activation analysis (NAA), neutron radiography, radiolysis, image processing, etc. MSTR initial criticality took place on December 9, 1961. The first power level that MSTR operates at, was 10 kW. The power level alongside the core configuration was upgraded to the current ones, see Fig. 1. MSTR used light-water for moderation and natural …

Sensor System For Rescue Robots, Alexander Moran, Emir Kusculu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

A majority of rescue worker fatalities are a result of on-scene responses. Existing technologies help assist the first responders in scenarios of no light, and there even exist robots that can navigate radioactive areas. However, none are able to be both quickly deployable and enter hard to reach or unsafe areas in an emergency event such as an earthquake or storm that damages a structure. In this project we created a sensor platform system to augment existing robotic solutions so that rescue workers can search for people in danger while avoiding preventable injury or death and saving time and resources. …

Epic: Examining Patch Impedance Characteristics, Shane Buck, Jyotsna Gopinath, Kyle Markfield

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

In the United States, approximately one in 4 adults have at least one chronic illness, making up approximately 84% of US Healthcare Spending. Unfortunately, 50% of patients with chronic diseases do not take their medication properly and as such spend more money trying to get better – approximately $100 billion in annual preventable costs. One solution to this issue is digital medicine as it allows for the monitoring of patient medicine consumption.

Our industry partner has developed a three-part digital medicine system with the aim of allowing patients with chronic health issues to better reach their health goals through monitoring …

Adjustable Medical Assistance Bed, Michelle Callson, Andrew Chen, Deborah Flores, Devin Meadows

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The objective of this project is to design and manufacture a bed that provides increased safety and convenience to patients needing physical assistance and their caregivers, specifically catering to special needs patients. The bed is designed to have variable height between 0” and 30” from the bottom of the mattress to the ground, allowing the patient to get into bed with minimal physical assistance from the caregiver. The design process for this product was organized in three subsystems: lifting mechanism, escape prevention, and frame. The lifting mechanism is designed to accommodate the bed’s variable height, as well as support the …

Pedal 4 Purification, Cory Yamagata, Coleton Rodd, Jonathan Keyes, Matthew Lograsso

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The lack of access to clean drinking water remains one of the largest issues still facing humanity. The Pedal 4 Purification is a product that addresses this need by utilizing pre-existing bicycle infrastructure and local freshwater sources to allow people to purify their own drinking water on a daily basis. Attachable to any standard bicycle, the Pedal 4 Purification product consists of pump, purification, cart and adjustable kickstand subsystems that allow the operator to pump, purify and transport 40L of potable water. Pedaling at the reasonable rate of 60 rpm will provide the optimal flow rate of 1.54L/min through the …

Justrun - Social Gps Running Game, Riley Bergin, Maggie Cai, Simran Judge, Grace Ling

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

With advances in technology allowing people to live more sedentary lives, more and more people are struggling to live a healthy active lifestyle. In the efforts to combat unhealthy styles of living, we wish to introduce a mobile app that takes advantage of motivational game mechanics to motivate players will make go on runs regularly.

Sequential Earthquake Damage Assessment Incorporating Optimized Suav Remote Sensing At Pescara Del Tronto, Michael Freeman, Cory Vernon, Benjamin Barrett, Nicole Hastings, Jeff Derricott, Janessa Pace, Benjamin Horne, Joshua Hammond, Joseph Janson, Filiberto Chiabrando, John Hedengren, Kevin W. Franke

Faculty Publications

A sequence of large earthquakes in central Italy ranging in moment magnitudes (Mw) from 4.2 to 6.5 caused significant damage to many small towns in the area. After each earthquake in 2016 (24 August and 26 October), automated small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAV) acquired valuable imagery data for post-hazard reconnaissance in the mountain village of Pescara del Tronto, and were applied to 3D reconstruction using Structure-from-Motion (SfM). In July 2018, the site was again monitored to obtain additional imagery data capturing changes since the last visit following the 30 October 2016 Earthquake. A genetic-based mission-planning algorithm that delivers optimal viewpoints …

Achieving High-Power Configuration In Missouri S&T Reactor (Mstr) For Potential Uprate, Thaqal Alhuzaymi, Ayodeji Babatunde Alajo

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Research reactor is a powerful tool because of its wide contribution, almost to each field of science. It’s considered to be an essential element for advancing research, development and improvement in nuclear industry. The main goal of research reactor is to produce neutrons which are beneficially used for a wide range of applications such as industrial, agricultural, medical, etc. Neutron spectrum impact it uses. Commonly, neutrons with low energy level, up to 0.5 eV, called thermal neutrons where neutrons with intermediate energy level, ranging from 0.5 eV to 0.10 MeV, called epithermal "resonance" neutrons and neutron with high energy level, …

Investigation Into The Effects Of Blade Tip Twist On Noise Reduction For A Naca 0012 Rotor Blade, Uyen T. Sou

McNair Research Journal SJSU

The advancement of the urban air mobility concept is heavily dependent on the public acceptance of the aircraft vehicles used for air taxis. The importance of the perception of noise by humans is crucial to the passing of legislation and proposals working to implement the new transport system. The investigation into how the noise perception can be reduced is vital to the success of the personal air travel industry. The air taxi design has been geared towards the rotorcraft models. Therefore, the investigation into the rotor blade designs is necessary because, similar to helicopters, the main component in noise generation …

Effects And Solutions On The Human Body After Long-Duration Space Flights, Jose Jaime Esquivel Patricio

McNair Research Journal SJSU

During the Cold War, President John F. Kennedy made it a mission for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to accomplish a lunar landing and return to Earth. The final lunar landing and the last time humans left Low Earth Orbit (LEO) was in December, 1972. However, 47 years have passed and the fascination with traveling into deep space remains alive and flourishing. A major problem with future human missions to Mars is the effects of microgravity and Mars’ 0.38g environment. Unfortunately, space medicine is limited and little is known about the effects of microgravity on the human body …

N.O.V.I.: Note Organizer For The Visually Impaired, Axel Perez, Cesar Tesen

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Visually impaired students face extra challenges when it comes to the basic necessity of note-taking. Current assistive technology is fragmented in function. These students often need to combine solutions such as voice recording lectures, hiring someone to transcribe notes to braille, hiring a reader, etc. The amount of time and money they need for these solutions proves to be a great disadvantage, and we wish to provide an easier solution that will give these students a more independent and productive learning experience.

Our solution is an application that can offer intuitive, convenient, and comprehensive access to notes for the visually …

Approximation Techniques For Stochastic Analysis Of Biological Systems, Thakur Neupane, Zhen Zhang, Curtis Madsen, Hao Zheng, Chris J. Myers

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

There has been an increasing demand for formal methods in the design process of safety-critical synthetic genetic circuits. Probabilistic model checking techniques have demonstrated significant potential in analyzing the intrinsic probabilistic behaviors of complex genetic circuit designs. However, its inability to scale limits its applicability in practice. This chapter addresses the scalability problem by presenting a state-space approximation method to remove unlikely states resulting in a reduced, finite state representation of the infinite-state continuous-time Markov chain that is amenable to probabilistic model checking. The proposed method is evaluated on a design of a genetic toggle switch. Comparisons with another state-of-the-art …

Galápago!, Jeffrey Nguyen, Sally Park, Manuel Sanchez

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The Galápagos Islands are the tourism hub in Ecuador. The islands greatly benefit economically from the tourism industry, but tourism also affects the conservation of the islands and the local businesses. Locals are suffering due to the impact of tourism. Tourists from around the world go to the archipelago seeking the beauty of the islands. People come on cruise ships to ports, but many aren’t aware of the local businesses and etiquette on the islands, preferring to stay on the ship or near the ports. GalápaGo! is the solution for locals and tourists on the Galapagos Islands. The goal of …

Environment Chamber For Shape-Memory Alloy Testing, Luis Acevedo, Joseph Bodo, Nicholas Fernandes

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The purpose of this project is to design, test, and build a temperature-controlled environment chamber to enable tensile testing of shape memory alloy (SMA) wire specimens at a temperatures ranging from 80-200°C. The most important design specifications were a maximum exterior wall temperature of 40°C and a maximum temperature variation along the specimen length of ±5°C, with end users' ease- of-use considered. Hand calculations and iterative finite element analysis (FEA) simulations in SolidWorks were used to verify design choices before proceeding with sourcing parts and materials, and assembly. Real-world implementation of the system showed a heat-up time of roughly 25 …

A Traffic-Aware Approach For Enabling Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uavs) In Smart City Scenarios, Hesham El-Sayed, Moumena Chaqfa, Sherali Zeadally, Deepak Puthal

Information Science Faculty Publications

In smart cities, vehicular applications require high computation capabilities and low-latency communication. Edge computing offers promising solutions for addressing these requirements because of several features, such as geo-distribution, mobility, low latency, heterogeneity, and support for real-time interactions. To employ network edges, existing fixed roadside units can be equipped with edge computing servers. Nevertheless, there are situations where additional infrastructure units are required to handle temporary high traffic loads during public events, unexpected weather conditions, or extreme traffic congestion. In such cases, the use of flying roadside units are carried by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which provide the required infrastructure for …

Automatic Romaine Heart Harvester, Jonathan Borst, Chuck Culberson, Andrew Torrance

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The Romaine Robotics Senior Design Team developed a romaine lettuce heart trimming system in partnership with a Salinas farm to address a growing labor shortage in the agricultural industry that is resulting in crops rotting in the field before they could be harvested. An automated trimmer can alleviate the most time consuming step in the cut-trim-bag harvesting process, increasing the yields of robotic cutters or the speed of existing laborer teams. Leveraging the Partner Farm’s existing trimmer architecture, which consists of a laborer loading lettuce into sprungloaded grippers that are rotated through vision and cutting systems by an indexer, the …

Power-Assist Wheelchair Attachment, Catherine Van Blommestein, Ryan Boyce, Rosemary Cole, Matthew Marks

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This senior design project sought to combine the best characteristics of manual and power wheelchairs by creating a battery-powered attachment to propel a manual wheelchair. The primary customer needs were determined to be affordability, portability, and travel on uneven surfaces. After the initial prototype, using a hub motor proved unsuccessful, so a second design was developed that consisted of a gear reduction motor and drive wheel connected to the back of the wheelchair by a trailing arm that could be easily attached/detached from the frame. The prototype of the second design succeeded in meeting most of the project goals related …

College Of Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

College of Engineering & Computing: News & Publications (2010-2023)

• GS Civil Engineering alum named DOT District Engineer

Design Of An Urban Garden Aquaponics System, Riley Albright-Borden, James Wang, Sydney Thompson

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

The project objective is to create a durable, off-the-grid, large-scale aquaponics system consisting of over 90 sq. ft of growing space, a 650-gallon fishpond, and four types of sensors to transmit water quality data to the internet for remote water quality monitoring. The end goal of the project is to supplement produce grown in the garden to further increase fresh, nutritional options available in meals cooked and distributed by Loaves and Fishes Family Kitchen to combat food insecurity in San Jose. This report presents the need for a system, details the various subsystems, and the rationale for the designs. It …

Micro-Ct Evaluation Of Defects In Ti-6al-4v Parts Fabricated By Metal Additive Manufacturing, Haijun Gong, Venkata Karthik Nadimpalli, Khalid Rafi, Thomas Starr, Brent Stucker

Manufacturing Engineering: Faculty Publications (2015-2023)

In this study, micro-computed tomography (CT) is utilized to detect defects of Ti-6Al-4V specimens fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) and electron beam melting (EBM), which are two popular metal additive manufacturing methods. SLM and EBM specimens were fabricated with random defects at a specific porosity. The capability of micro-CT to evaluate inclusion defects in the SLM and EBM specimens is discussed. The porosity of EBM specimens was analyzed through image processing of CT single slices. An empirical method is also proposed to estimate the porosity of reconstructed models of the CT scan.

Secure And Efficient Bft Consensus For Blockchains, Mohammad Mussadiq Jalalzai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Blockchains are simple data structures, containing transactions organized into blocks, in which each block points to a previous block using its hash. Thus, by following the chain, we can follow the history of transactions. Blocks are added to the chain through a consensus mechanism. Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols that were designed before blockchains were introduced are usually considered appropriate for use in small scale networks of size 10-20 replicas. Blockchains have changed this trend as the blockchain networks usually require a larger number of replicas and classic BFT protocols cannot provide acceptable performance in large networks. One of …

Fossil Mobiles: Exploring The Process Of Art As Science Inquiry For Elementary Students Through A Grounded Theory Study, Jolene K. Teske, Courtney Clausen, Harun Parpucu, Phyllis Gray, Audrey C. Rule

Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions

Arts integration into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subject areas is currently an important area of investigation. This study developed a grounded theory of how artmaking of a mobile related to fossil life of the Devonian period engendered geoscience inquiry. Data were collected from elementary students entering fourth to sixth grade (7 male, 9 female) attending a week-long summer camp at a Midwestern university. Students engaged in a daily hour-long class creating fossil mobiles and learning geoscience content through illustrated slide shows, form and function sets of materials related to Devonian fossils, fossil books, and a fossil hunter- fossil …

Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Still-Life Paintings Of Crystals With Artist-Focused Compared To Science-Focused Introductions, Mahjabeen Hussain, Dessy Stoycheva, Audrey C. Rule, Denise A. Tallakson

Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions

This experimental study was undertaken with preservice teachers to test whether the use of science integration into arts education increases demonstration of science details and creative features in artwork. Two conditions were created: arts-focused and science-focused; gouache still-life paintings were produced and analyzed, and an attitude survey was completed. The results suggested that science integration into visual arts classes increased creativity for the arts-focused condition and increased science concepts in the science-focused condition. Participants in both conditions reported positive attitudes, specifically, high levels of enjoyment, alluded to lack of experience with arts and creative projects, and expressed desire for more …

A Content Analysis Of Thirty Children’S Picture Books About Ecology, Natalia Martín Martín, Jennifer L. Hageman, Sarah E. Montgomery, Audrey C. Rule

Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions

This study presents a content analysis of 30 ecology-themed children’s picture books published in English and Spanish from 1994 to the present. Books were analyzed for the following aspects: 1) Nature appreciation, 2) Interrelatedness of Nature, 3) Realistic ecology problem, 4) Differing perspectives, 5) Hope for a solution, 6) Reflection and responsibility, 7) Steps for a solution, 8) Positive tone, 9) Representation of diversity, 10) Appropriate illustrations, 11) Story appeal, and 12) Developmental appropriateness. Scoring guidelines are provided in an appendix. Content analysis results revealed that most books raise awareness about the impact of human action on the environment, although …

Ocean Underwater Scene Dioramas Of First Graders With Submarine Porthole Views, Ksenia Zhbanova, Audrey C. Rule, Denise A. Tallakson

Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions

Ecology education of the younger generations is vital for worldwide change of people’s attitudes toward nature warranted by the current global ecological crisis. Yet, this goal needs to be addressed through age-appropriate activities that are educational and engaging. This practical article focuses on dioramas of ocean reef life made by first graders. This arts-integrated project served two main purposes: 1) education of primary students about ocean ecology and helping students realize their roles in saving nature 2) increasing student science content knowledge. Additionally, several other benefits of making dioramas emerged during this project, including highly creative student products, genuine interest …