Engineering Commons^™

Indicator-Supporting Fixture Based On A Time And Motion Study, James Anthony

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The design goal of this project was proposed by the sponsor company, Jay-Em Aerospace in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. I was tasked with observing a process carried out in the Assembly department by multiple people and charged with coming up with a fixture to improve safety, speed, and accuracy of this task. To determine how to make the process safer, interviews were conducted with the people who would usually be carrying out this process and determined their top concerns and issues with how it is carried out currently. To improve the speed and accuracy of the process, a "time and motion …

Autonomous Uav Battery Swapping, Reed Jacobsen, Nikolai Ruhe, Nathan Dornback

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

One of the main hindrances of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology are power constraints. One way to alleviate some power constraints would be for two UAVs to exchange batteries while both are in flight. Autonomous mid-air battery swapping will expand the scope of UAV technology by allowing for indefinite flight times and longer missions. A single board computer will control each UAV’s flight software to respond to inputs to align with each other mid-flight. When the two UAVs have joined, mechanical components will exchange a depleted battery on the worker UAV for a freshly charged battery that belongs to the …

Impact Of Noise Level On Task Performance And Workload And Correlation To Personality, Kaylee Marie Eakins

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

An ideal work environment supports a culture of high performance, low mental workload, and quick turnarounds. The impact of noise on three types of tasks in a lab work environment were examined while attempting to identify correlations between a subject's personality and their tolerance to noise. Neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extroversion correlated significantly with subjective (NASA-TLX) and physiological mental workload measures (heart rate variability and eye-tracking). The results show that task type impacts the performance, task duration, and mental workload. Although the physiological workload measures showed significant impact, the parameters standard deviation of R-R intervals and LF/HF ratio agreed with …

Igniting Self-Directed Learning And Higher Level Workforce Competencies In An Aviation Curriculum, Timothy D. Ropp

IMPACT Presentations

Discusses the underlying concepts and pedagogies informing an IMPACT redesign course in Aviation, focused on developing workplace competencies and students' self-directed learning.

Understanding How First-Generation College Students’ Out-Of-School Experiences, Physics And Stem Identities Relate To Engineering Possible Selves And Certainty Of Career Path, Dina Verdín, Allison Godwin, Gerhard Sonnert, Phillip M. Sadler

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

This full, research category study examines how out-of-school experiences in Grades 9-12 predict first-generation college students’ engineering possible selves and certainty of career path. The data for this study came from a large-scale survey on outreach programs which was distributed in first- semester English courses to capture an array of responses from students interested in STEM and non-STEM careers. We used structural equation modeling to examine a set of hypotheses: 1) out-of-school experiences would be mediated by interest and recognition in physics and STEM and no direct effect will be found for out-of-school experiences on physics and STEM identities, 2) …

Integrity Assessment Of Earthen Dams And Levees Using Cross-Plot Analysis Of Seismic Refraction And Electrical Resistivity Tomograms, Leti Teklu Wodajo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Geophysical methods provide a rapid, economical, non-invasive, and spatial coverage of the subsurface in terms of geophysical properties. On the other hand, geophysical methods can generate multiple geophysical anomalies. An anomaly on a seismic refraction or an electrical resistivity tomogram is an area that has different values compared to its surrounding. Geophysical anomalies in dams and levees can be due to the overall heterogeneity of the subsurface, structures such as principal spillways, artifacts of inversion software, or to a true compromised location, such as an air void due to internal erosion or seepage. Therefore, there is uncertainty involved with using …

Electrospinning Aqueous Solutions Of Poly(Ethylene Oxide) Using A Corona-Type Apparatus, Nicholas Neill

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project was to evaluate working parameters for the corona spinneret to create electrospun fibers/ fiber mat. This project was set-up using a Box-Behnken design of experiment. The working parameters were investigated by performing the electrospinning process, altering the working conditions, collecting the electrospun fibers. The scope of this project includes three primary operational conditions: distance between the spinneret and the collection plate, the viscosity (weight percent) of PEO in the spinning solution and the weight percent of NaCl in the spinning solution. The distance between the spinneret and the collection plate were varied to 18 cm, …

Ball Oscillating Bouncer, Eric Blok, Daniel Altemese, Ryan Nowacki, Maram Qurban

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this report is to document the need, objectives, marketing and engineering requirements, as well as validate the design of an autonomous control device capable of continuously bouncing a table tennis ball on a paddle. This includes the design of a self correcting system using lightweight materials, and as few sensors and components as possible to achieve a compact, portable design. To accomplish this, the system is designed to react to a ball falling from as short a distance as 10 centimeters above the paddle, meaning all sensor processing, control processing, and motor drives should be able to …

Sports Spectator Beacon, Alexander Connelly

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of this design project is to develop a system that can determine the location of an implemented beacon. The main operating technique used in determining the location is RSSI multilateration. The system consists of a beacon, network transmitters, mobile users, core processing and an interface with each software component for data transmission. The beacon is only an RF transmitter; therefore, receivers need to be able to interpret the signal of the beacon. In order to determine the location of the beacon from the receivers, the locations of the receivers must be known. The network transmitters’ act as a …

An Assessment Of Trihalomethanes And Haloacetic Acids On The Cancer Exposure Risk Of Ohio Drinking Water Systems, Stephen Sykes

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The cancer exposure risk from drinking chlorine-based disinfection by-products (DBPs) such as trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs) has been established as a major concern to public health as 98% of the United States drinking water systems in operation use chlorinated systems to disinfect the water they provide [2]. Using data collected from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency from January 2014 to September 2017 in the cites of Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Canton, and Akron this study attempts to look at the risk of cancer caused by the DBPs. To show the relative risk of several different systems in operation from …

Wearable Hearing Accessory Technology, Tyler Cindea, Jaime Alcorn, Brooke Draper, Kyle Glascott, Ben Hanna, Robert Thoerner

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

We set out in August 2017 to develop an active noise suppressing device that would be usable both in military and civilian activities. Due to constraints in knowledge and time, we decided our best course of action was to divide the project into two equal projects with the hope to be able to combine them into a single project at the end of the allotted time. This consisted of an active noise suppression device and a passive noise suppression device. The passive device would have no electronic components and the active device would be pure circuitry with no housing. This …

Budget Quadcopter Kit, Connor Bailey, Taylor Stephens

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Over the past few years quadcopters, also known as drones, have really started to take off in a recreational market. The technology has come a long way over the past decade and as with most technology, as it has matured it has become cheaper and more accessible to everyday people. So much so that anyone can go online and purchase a small quadcopter for under $20. They are relatively easy to fly and can even be flown indoors due to how safe they are as well. However, buying a quadcopter online doesn't really allow the consumer to develop a true …

The Influence Of Organic Pigments On Coating Properties, Sarah Medeiros

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to identify the qualities of two synthesized organic pigments added to a coating. These high-performance pigments were benzodipyrrolidone and benzodifuranone, which are π-conjugated monomers. These pigments were each formulated into two different pigment concentrations and compared with a control that had no pigment. This project is limited by time constraints and the number of variables that can be tested in that time. Performance testing was conducted to evaluate the qualities of these coatings. The results demonstrated that the coatings were reproducible and most tests had results that were equal to or exceeded the …

Soil Moisture Sensor, Jaclyn Miller, Derek Bitecofer, Seung Jun Lee

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Since water is an important resource and not all communities around the world can afford to be liberal with their water needs; it has become important to use available water as efficiently as possible, especially in agriculture. For the purpose of reducing the overwatering of crops, an unattended ground moisture sensor can be implemented to measure the moisture level in the soil surrounding the plants. This will allow a farmer to know when to water or stop watering crops. For convenience, the moisture data information should be transmitted wirelessly to the user. The design of an unattended ground moisture sensor …

Engineering Technology And Engineering Program Comparison Of Underrepresented Students In The Same Institution, Anne M. Lucietto, Lesley M. Berhan

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Engineering programs include far fewer African American students than engineering technology students enrolled in four-year programs at universities offering both ABET accredited programs. Several studies show this contrast, suggesting that further research in this area is warranted. The rationale for the higher population of students consistently in one program over the other is generally unknown. While researchers study the engineering population, the engineering technology population goes relatively unnoticed. The effects of a student’s past and current environments in engineering technology are relatively unknown. Researchers developed a survey to gather data from underrepresented populations in universities that meet the noted criteria. …

International Experience Of Engineering Technology Students Learning About Renewable Energy, Anne M. Lucietto

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Cultural exposure is said to be an enhancement to collegial learning. With this in mind, students in an engineering technology program were given the opportunity to go to Germany to a regional university, experience education in that setting, and visit sites dedicated to renewable energy. The students were given a two-week experience that taught them through both formal and informal means. Ultimately, students experienced curiosity, openness to different cultural norms, and were able to identify components of other cultural perspectives responding with their own worldviews. The researchers utilized the Miville-Guzman Universality Diversity Scale (M-GUDS-S) to assess pre and post activity …

Engineering Technology Students: Do They Approach Capstone Courses Differently Than Other Students?, Frederick Berry, Anne M. Lucietto, Andrew Scott

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Using data collected from students in engineering technology, engineering, and other areas such as computer science a comparison of student reactions to the capstone course are coded and sorted. Using content analysis methods, the researchers compare and contrast the various student groups and their reactions to assigned capstone projects. They are also able to assess student interaction with faculty and industry mentors. Researchers strive to learn more about these various student approaches to the capstone experience and to further our understanding of best practices in capstone courses.

Stem Educators: Who Are They?, Anne M. Lucietto, Liza Ann Russell

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Technical education or STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is often touted as the way for students to succeed, for corporations to move forward, and to gain prominence in the world economy. With all this promotion, do we know who is teaching these subjects to our students? This question urged researchers to develop a survey and distribute it to those teaching STEM subjects. The survey collected a variety of information, the results of the demographic section being reported here. The survey responses are from a population of STEM educators teaching at all levels, found to be male and generally …

Spacecraft Fire Safety Research: Combustion Of Lithium-Ion Batteries To Predict Fire Scenarios, Elisabeth Meyer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project was to research characteristics of a Lithium-ion battery fire to determine if trends exist in measured fire characteristics that can help predict different fire scenarios. These experiments will ultimately aid in developing an alarm threshold for a spacecraft smoke detector, specifically for Orion, a new, multi-purpose crew vehicle under development by NASA. Orion is the next-generation of spacecraft designed to replace the space shuttle and will play an important role in NASA’s journey to Mars.

In the experiments performed, Lithium-ion batteries were placed in a test chamber and ignited while smoke concentration was measured, simulating …

Effects Of Hofmeister Ions On Gelation Of Gelatin And Pluronic Hydrogels, Eric Britton

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of the project was to observe the effects of the Hofmeister series of ions on the gelation of gelatin and Pluronic-127 hydrogels. Hydrogels are semi-solid materials that contain a network of joined molecules through intermolecular interactions which are capable of holding water. Gelatin and Pluronic-127 (PF-127) are thermoreversible, physical crosslinked gels. Gelation occurs when temperature, or other driving forces, reduce the polymer chain solubility until a distinct 2-phase system forms. When aqueous ions are present in solution, they exhibit specific ion effects that have either a stabilizing or destabilizing effect on the solubility of proteins and other polymers. …

Interfacial Corrosion Of Copper And The Formation Of Copper Hydroxychloride, Mary Teague, Shengxi Li, Hongbo Cong

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Electrical circuitry is an industry, among many others, heavily using the element of copper. Ensuring the mechanical integrity of Cu is crucial, especially in salt environments, for the multifaceted composition of circuits. 4N NaCl solution (equilibrium concentration in ~84% RH) simulated this three-phase system. Rectangular Cu samples were partially immersed in both ambient and continuous lab air sparging atmospheres to understand waterline corrosion of the metal. Open circuit potentials (OCP) were continuously taken during the immersion testing for a maximum of 5 days. A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS), Raman spectroscopy, and 3-D …

Tandem Mass Spectrometry (Ms/Ms) For Determination Of Architecture Of Synthetic Polymers, Shoumik Saha

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Tandem Mass Spectrometry (MS/MS) was used to determine the architecture of synthetic polymers and they are difluorene-N₃, 3-difluorene-N₃ and VPOSS-3-difluorene. VPOSS materials usually exhibit electrochemical properties and the research was performed to determine their accurate structure and to provide evidence of their proper synthesis. The compounds were mixed with a matrix solution, DCTB, and a silver salt to enable proper protonation. The solvent mixture was on a MALDI plate and then put into the mass spectrometer. The mass spectrum generated was analyzed and each fragment was identified to structures with the synthetic polymers via ChemDraw. Thus, trial …

Development And Impact Of Teacher Social Capital In An Engineering Education Teacher Professional Development Program, Wei Zakharov

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Teacher social capital is a set of social interaction assets such as collegiality and collaboration that enable teachers to work with each other in groups to improve teaching and learning. This results in instructional improvement and student success in school reform.

This study discusses how an engineering education teacher professional development program has developed an environment for long-term collegiality and collaboration among its teachers. Furthermore, the study presents an empirical evidence of the impact of teacher social capital on students’ engineering knowledge learning.

Ninety teachers and 621 students are examined in this program. The participants are from fifteen elementary schools …

Carbazole Based Multifunctional Dopamine Agonists And Related Molecules As Potential Symptomatic And Disease Modifying Therapeutic Agents For Parkinson’S Disease, Asma S.Mohamed Elmabruk

Wayne State University Dissertations

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that develops from gradual depletion of dopamine (DA) and dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) with the accumulation of intraneuronal proteinaceous matter named as Lewy bodies. The four cardinal symptoms associated with PD are tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, and postural instability. Although the exact mechanism and etiology of PD are not fully understood, several factors have been implicated in the pathogenesis and progression of PD including protein aggregation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, environmental, and genetic factors.

The current therapy of Parkinson’s disease is categorized into four classes: levodopa, DA agonists, …

Surfactants, Thermal And Surface Energy Effects On Emulsions’ Transport Properties: A Study Using Lattice Boltzmann Method, Wessam Falih Hasan

Wayne State University Dissertations

This work aims to provide an efficient Gunstensen LBM based CFD model, capable of solving complex problems related to droplets behavior in shear and parabolic flows.

Thermal conditions determine the outcome of the physical and transport properties of emulsions during their various processing phases. A better understanding of the intricate relationship between thermal, surfactants and hydrodynamics can help in the optimization of these processes during the production of emulsions. To investigate the outcome of coupling thermal, surfactants and hydrodynamics on emulsions behavior, a robust quasi-steady thermal-surfactants numerical scheme is presented and used here. To validate the model, the rheological behavior …

Identification Of Streptococcus Pyogenes Using Raman Spectroscopy, Ehsan Majidi

Wayne State University Dissertations

Despite the attention that Raman Spectroscopy has gained recently in the area of pathogen identification, the spectra analyses techniques are not well developed. In most scenarios, they rely on expert intervention to detect and assign the peaks of the spectra to specific molecular vibration. Although some investigators have used machine-learning techniques to classify pathogens, these studies are usually limited to a specific application, and the generalization of these techniques is not clear. Also, a wide range of algorithms have been developed for classification problems, however, there is less insight to applying such methods on Raman spectra. Furthermore, analyzing the Raman …

Learning Convolutional Neural Network For Face Verification, Elaheh Rashedi

Wayne State University Dissertations

Convolutional neural networks (ConvNet) have improved the state of the art in many applications. Face recognition tasks, for example, have seen a significantly improved performance due to ConvNets. However, less attention has been given to video-based face recognition. Here, we make three contributions along these lines.

First, we proposed a ConvNet-based system for long-term face tracking from videos. Through taking advantage of pre-trained deep learning models on big data, we developed a novel system for accurate video face tracking in the unconstrained environments depicting various people and objects moving in and out of the frame. In the proposed system, we …

Experimental Validation Of An Integrated Guidance And Control System For Marine Surface Vessels, Anthony Composto

Wayne State University Dissertations

Autonomous operation of marine surface vessels is vital for minimizing human errors and providing efficient operations of ships under varying sea states and environmental conditions which is complicated by the highly nonlinear dynamics of marine surface vessels. To deal with modelling imprecision and unpredictable disturbances, the sliding mode methodology has been employed to devise a heading and a surge displacement controller. The implementation of such a controller necessitates the availability of all state variables of the vessel. However, the measured signals in the current study are limited to the global X and Y positioning coordinates of the boat that are …

Channel Fading Statistics For Real-Time Data Transmission In Emergency Call Systems And Unmanned Aerial Systems, Yunrui Li

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) selected an in-band modem to transmit emergency data over cellular voice channel for the European Union emergency call (eCall) system. However, the road test results presented by the Harmonized eCall European Pilot project showed that the success rate of data delivery was only 71%, indicating that there is significant potential to improve its performance.

In this dissertation, a testbed is designed for the eCall system that satisfies the 3GPP TS 26.267/268/269 standards. A method is proposed to measure the power of the received signal that passes through the in-band channel. Experiments are performed with …

Detectability Of Fuzzy Discrete Event Systems, Ahmed Mekki

Wayne State University Dissertations

Dynamic systems that can be modeled in terms of discrete states and a synchronous events are known as discrete event systems (DES). A DES is defined in terms of states, events, transition dynamics, and initial state. Knowing the system’s state is crucial in many applications for certain actions (events) to be taken. A DES system is considered a fuzzy discrete event system (FDES) if its states and events are vague in nature; for such systems, the system can be in more than one state at the same time with different degrees of possibility (membership). In this research we introduce a …