Engineering Mechanics Commons^™

Energy Absorption Of Sine Wave Beams Subjected To Axial Impact Loading, Robert Smith

All Theses

Energy absorbers ideally remove kinetic energy efficiently and reliably while minimizing force magnitudes felt on the moving body. Until now, energy absorber design has concentrated on thin-walled prismatic tubes and tapered tubes. Sine wave beams (SWB) have been previously investigated as energy absorbers under lateral impacting situations only. This thesis investigates the energy absorption of the SWB under axial impact. FE models simulated the energy absorbing response of the SWB. Parametric analyses were performed using the structure's thickness, the web amplitude, and the period number of the web. The SWB's performance is evaluated and then compared to the prismatic structures. …

Modeling Requirements Propagation To Generate Solutions For Minimizing Mass, Thulasiram Ezhilan

All Theses

This thesis investigates the issue of weight reduction in moderately complex systems by addressing how to cascade the requirements to the individual components. Though mass can be reduced using different techniques such as material substitution or structural optimization; a systematic method for allocating mass as a function of requirements is necessary to provide novel alternate solutions that enable reduction of mass of the system while satisfying the requirements and tests governing them. Such a method can be developed by exploring different aspects of achieving weight reduction through change propagation in the parameters/elements governing the system. Though efforts have been made …

Machinability And Microstructure Stability During The Machining Of Pure Copper And Titanium Processed By Equal Channel Angular Pressing, Mason Morehead

All Theses

For ultrafine grained materials (containing microstructures of 100-300 nm) to be manufactured and used in industry, machining research is needed to form and shape these materials into their final dimensions. Because of their high internal energy, UFG materials are known to have microstructures which are susceptible to undesirable changes at low temperatures. In this study, pure ultrafine grained copper and titanium as well as their respective coarse grained (CG) counterparts were tested for their relative machinability and microstructure stability through lathe turning. To evaluate the machinability cutting forces, tool wear, chip morphology, and surface roughness were studied using different cutting …

A Study Of Induced Drag And Spanwise Lift Distribution For Three-Dimensional Inviscid Flow Over A Wing, Scott Monsch

All Theses

Numerical results for an untwisted, finite rectangular wing (NACA 0012, AR = 6.7) using no flap deflections are compared against theoretical lifting line predictions. The numerical approach used an Euler-based computational fluid dynamic (CFD) solver. A span-wise lift distribution was extracted from the CFD solution. The comparison between the predicted numerical and lifting-line span-wise lift distributions shows good agreement with a maximum deviation of only 2.4% over the wing span.
The induced drag was extracted from the downstream wake using a wake integral technique referred to as Trefftz plane analysis. The predictions for induced drag based on surface integration, wake …

Experimental Methods To Characterize Nonlinear Vibration Of Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles, Adam P. Tobias

Theses and Dissertations

For urban combat reconnaissance, the flapping wing micro air vehicle concept is ideal because of its low speed and miniature size, which are both conducive to indoor operations. The focus of this research is the development of experimental methods best suited for the vibration testing of the wing structure of a flapping wing micro air vehicle. This study utilizes the similarity of a beam resonating at its first bending mode to actual wing flapping motion. While computational finite element analysis based on linear vibration theory is employed for preliminary beam sizing, an emphasis is placed on experimental measurement of the …

Dynamic Networking Of Exemplars: Towards A Mechanical Design Visual Programming Language, Shashidhar Putti

All Theses

Developing mechanical engineering design automation applications using current day textual programming languages like C, C++ requires extensive programming skills. However, learning to program in these environments can be time consuming and often frustrating to mechanical engineers due to the use of complex textual constructs and syntax to represent an algorithm in a linear fashion. Further, these programming languages offer a poor visualization of the data and the data flow due to their textual nature. The use of graphical objects for programming makes visualization easier and also eliminates the need for linear representation of algorithms. This thesis initiates the development of …

Me-Em 2007 Annual Report, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Annual Reports

Table of Contents

• Research Expansion
• Research Groups
• Faculty & Staff
• Students
• Alumni
• Resources
• Graduates
• Publications

Influence Of Van Der Waals Forces On Increasing The Strength And Toughness In Dynamic Fracture Of Nanofibre Networks: A Peridynamic Approach, Florin Bobaru Ph.D.

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Faculty Publications

The peridynamic method is used here to analyse the effect of van der Waals forces on the mechanical behaviour and strength and toughness properties of three-dimensional nanofibre networks under imposed stretch deformation. The peridynamic formulation allows for a natural inclusion of long-range forces (such as van der Waals forces) by considering all interactions as ‘long-range’. We use van der Waals interactions only between different fibres and do not need to model individual atoms. Fracture is introduced at the microstructural (peridynamic bond) level for the microelastic type bonds, while van der Waals bonds can reform at any time. We conduct statistical …