Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Effect Of Structural Variations On Thermal Deformation Of Single Curvature Composite Sandwich Panels, Brady C. Lotz

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Composite structures cured at a high temperature in a contoured female mold have a tendency to deform or spring-in when brought down to room temperature from cure temperature. This thesis investigates the effects of various structural parameters on the spring-in of the curved shape of a composite sandwich panel due to thermal deformation. A finite element model of a single curved composite sandwich panel is developed using 3D shell elements and validated against other published articles and classical lamination theory. Using a control structure of AS4/3501-6 carbon/epoxy with half inch Nomex honeycomb core with a layup of [0°/90°/0°/90°/Core/90°/0°/90°/0°]T, structural parameters …

Performance Evaluation Of Plate-Fin And Pin-Fin Heat Sinks For The Application Of Oil Immersion Cooling And Design Optimization Of Dynamic Cold Plate For The Application Of Warm Water Cooling, Parth Jayeshkumar Soni

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

In IT industries, to keep server rooms and data centers cool is a constant challenge for hardware developers and the cooling solution providers. Air cooling is the most widely used approach for thermal management of servers in data centers from many years. However, the scenario is changing gradually as the computational ability of data center is increasing exponentially. Because of increasing computational ability, the heat generated by the servers is increased in such amount that air cooling is not as efficient as it was before. Hence, alternative cooling system is required. In 1970’s the idea of liquid cooling was introduced. …

Control Strategies For Air-Side Economization, Direct And Indirect Evaporative Cooling And Artificial Neural Networks Applications For Energy Efficient Data Centers, Abhishek Guhe

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

The skyrocketing growth in data centers, facilities that house information technology (IT) equipment for storage, management and distribution of data while striving for 24/7/365 operation with 100% up-time, has accounted for 1.3% of global energy use. A significant portion of data center energy is dedicated to removing the heat generated by IT equipment to maintain safe operating conditions and optimum computing performance. Energy efficient cooling of data center is of vital importance. One of the options for significantly cutting the cooling cost is the use of air side economization (ASE), Indirect evaporative cooling (IEC) and Direct evaporative cooling (DEC) without …

Optimization Of Air Cooled Portion In A Server With Water Cooled Micro-Processors, Neha Inamdar

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

A Data center is the heart of our associated world. It is a facility that houses computer systems and related components. According to IDC, because of enormous increment in pattern of IoT (Internet of Things) and distributed computing the introduced limit of server farm workloads will increment by around 750% around 2014 and 2019. Data center spaces can consume up to 100 to 200 times as much power as standard office spaces. With such huge influence utilization, they are prime focuses for vitality proficient outline measures that can spare cash and lessen power use. In a regular Data center with …

A Study Of Electrical Double Layer Structure Over A Corroding Steel Surface In Sea Water, Pratik Babanrao Kale

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Corrosion is a natural deterioration phenomenon that throws profound adverse effects on the performance of structural steel in marine applications. Seawater consists of various corrosive components such as chlorine ions, sulphate ions and many more. These chemical components are mainly responsible for the corrosion phenomenon. Even though their bulk concentrations are known, their local concentrations and distribution in the vicinity of a steel surface where the corrosion occurs are yet unclear. Without the knowledge, would any approach to deal with the corrosion be empirical, at best. The main objective of the present thesis is to investigate the interfacial structure of …

Analysis Of An Artificial Tailplane Icing Flight Test Of A High-Wing, Twin-Engine Aircraft, Shehzad Maksudahmad Shaikh

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

The US Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) conducted a civilian, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sponsored, evaluation of tailplane icing of a twin-turboprop business transport at Edwards Air Force Base. The flight test was conducted to evaluate ice shape growth and extent of ice on the tailplane for specific weather conditions of Liquid Water Content (LWC), droplet size, and ambient temperature. This work analyzes the flight test data comparing the drag for various tailplane icing conditions with respect to a flight test verified calibrated aircraft model. Although less than a third of the test aircraft was involved in the icing …

A Mesh Based Boom To Stop Oil Spread, Bharathram Visweswaran

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

In this work, we develop a new boom to separate oil and water. In a commonly used boom, a membrane that has no pores is normally used to block oil spread. Since this membrane also blocks water flow, high pressure is easy to build on such a membrane to break or damage it. To solve this problem, in the new boom, the membrane is replaced with a hydrogel-coated mesh. The hydrogel-coated mesh has dual properties of superhydrophilicity and superoleophobicity. Accordingly, water can still go through the mesh, while oil cannot. Subsequently, liquid pressure on the mesh is reduced. In this …

Analysis Of Electric Double Layer Structure Formed During Corrosion Of Steel Pipes Carrying Potable Water, Tanmay Sanjeev Gupte

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Corrosion of steel pipes carrying drinking water is a universal issue. It affects human health as the corrosion sediments in these pipes can be toxic and unfit for consumption. Further, the amassing of the corrosion products can lead to operational difficulties. Drinking water consists of anions like carbonate, hydroxides and chloride ions which are responsible for the corrosion process. In such types of aqueous corrosion, there is an interfacial region formed between the corroding metal and the bulk of the aqueous environment. This interfacial region is called the Electrical Double Layer. In this article, we direct to study the effects …

Reliability Challenges In Airside Economization And Oil Immersion Cooling, Jimil Manojbhai Shah

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

The Datacom facility which comprises rooms or closets used for communication, computers/servers or electronic equipment requires cooling unit which consumes 31% (23% HVAC cooling + 8% HVAC fans) of overall energy. The ASHRAE TC9.9 subcommittee, on Mission Critical Facilities, Data Centers, Technology Spaces, and Electronic Equipment, has suited the data center’s executives by permitting brief period outings of the environmental conditions outside the prescribed temperature-humidity range, into passable extents A1-A4. To comprehend the expanding server densities and the required cooling vitality costs, data center operators are falling back on cost cutting measures. For instance, they are not firmly controlling the …

Harvesting Of Water From Fog Using Sponges, Jae Jun Lee

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Supervising Professor: Cheng Luo A sponge has porous structures. It is capable of both storing and transmitting water. In this work, we explored the possibility of applying three different types of sponges to collect fog. We also compared their fog-collection efficiencies with that of a typical Raschel mesh that is widely used in the field to collect fog. We found that, for three different fog speeds, the fog-collection efficiencies of three tested sponges were 39% to 93% those of the typical Raschel mesh, indicating that the sponges could serve as alternative fog collectors when well-developed collectors were not available. Sponge …

Cooling And Packaging Of Accumulators For Formula Sae Electric Car, Hang Yin

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Electric car is the future of automotive industry. The performance of the batteries is vital for that of electric cars. Overheating will compromise the performance of batteries, shorten the life span and even damage the battery permanently. So it is crucial to have an efficient packaging and cooling method. This project using Formula SAE Electric car as the testing ground is dedicated to develop the efficient way of thermal and electronic packaging of accumulators for automobiles.

Development And Flight Test Of Moving-Mass Actuated Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Sampath Reddy Vengate

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Conventional airplane control is achieved by aerodynamic control surfaces by generating moments around all the three axes of the aircraft. Defections of the control surfaces have some disadvantages such as induced drag, increase in radar signature, and exposure to high temperature in high speed applications. As an alternative moment generation mechanism, prior research proposed internal mass-actuation, which is to generate gravitational moment by changing the center of gravity of the aircraft through motion of internal masses within the aircraft. Prior research investigated the feasibility and benefit of internal mass-actuation in airplane control based on simulation analysis. The main focus of …

Numerical Studies On Spin Coating Of Metals, Varun Nanjunda Rao Viswamithra

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Spin coating is a surface coating process which involves spreading a liquid dispensed on the center of a rotating substrate. The liquid is discharged using a suitable method on to the substrate rotating at a constant angular speed. The spinning speed is controlled to obtain a coating of desired thickness with faster spinning resulting in thinner coating. The thickness of the coating also depends on the properties of the fluid and other process parameters. Centrifugal force is introduced into the code as radial component of acceleration. The first part of the code solves the continuity and the Navier-Stokes equations, with …

Cfd Analysis And Design Optimization Of Heat Sink For Oil Immersion Cooling, Koushik Epuri

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Air cooling is predominant cooling technique employed in most of the data centers. As the demand for High performance computing (HPC) which deploy large concentration of high-end servers (30 kW to 200 kW per rack) is increasing, it is becoming challenging to cool the systems using air cooling. Liquid cooling has significant advantages over air cooling techniques due to higher heat capacities of fluids. Liquid immersion cooling using dielectric and non-corrosive mineral oils is one of the potential alternative to air cooling methods for high density data centers. In this work, we consider a third generation open compute server optimized …

Design And Stiffness Optimization Of Quadri-Directional Composite Grid Lattice Structures, Gajendra Devanga Gangadara

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Composite grid structures are rib stiffeners connected to each other rigidly in a pattern or a lattice such that the whole grid pattern has certain smeared stiffness property and has a certain structural behavior. The main focus of this thesis is to design the geometric pattern of a Quadri-directional composite grid lattice such that it has the prescribed stiffness moduli. The research is divided into three phases, in the first phase, the equation for stiffness moduli, the reduced stiffness matrix [Q] and the laminate stiffness matrices [ABD] of the grid pattern is derived for Quadri-directional grid panels. In the second …

Time-Of-Flight Based Sonic Speed Measurements For Cold Gas Thruster Development, Brandon W. Kempf

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore an experiment developed for validating the usage of a gaseous solution of water and propylene glycol for cold gas propulsion. The experiment involves a “Time of Flight” method of calculating the speed of sound in the gas and the corresponding specific heat ratio using a copper tube, two MEMS microphones, a piezoelectric speaker, and data-acquisition hardware. The experiment was calibrated using the known thermodynamic properties of air. The accuracy of the experiment was found to be within 0.6% for calculations of the speed of sound in air and within 1.0% of the …

Investigating The Effect Of Capping Layers On Final Thin Film Morphology After A Dewetting Process, Benjamin C. White

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nanoparticles on a substrate have numerous applications in nanotechnology, from enhancements to solar cell efficiency to improvements in carbon nanotube growth. Producing nanoparticles in a cheap fashion with some control over size and spacing is difficult to do, but desired. This work presents a novel method for altering the size and spacing of nickel and gold nanoparticles. Dewetting is a methodology to reduce thin films to an ensemble of discrete droplets. The introduction of alumina capping layers to thin nickel films during a pulsed laser-induced dewetting process has yielded reductions in the mean and standard deviation of radii and pitch …

Path Following By A Quadrotor Using Virtual Target Pursuit Guidance, Abhishek Manjunath

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Missile guidance laws have been solely developed to follow and intercept a target thereby destroying or damaging it. In this research, the primary objective is to modify and adopt a missile guidance law to be used on a quadrotor to follow a virtual target. The target is termed 'virtual' as it only exists mathematically in the form of equations. The goal is to have the quadrotor successfully following the predefined path (described by the target) while maintaining a fixed distance from the virtual target. To ensure viability and assess performance, a detailed comparison with another path following law is made.

Quadrotor Uav Path Following Using Trajectory Shaping, Parwinder Singh Mehrok

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The propose of this research is to develop a path following control law known as Trajectory Shaping. The approach is to develop a three- dimensional (3D) version of it from an existing two-dimensional (2D) model. Apart from research on this 3D control law, a multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform, having four rotors and known as quadrotor is designed from the ground up for validating the concept of path following. Several pre-defined paths like the circle and figure-eight trajectories are used to apply the newly developed version of this control law. The existing 2D concept of Trajectory Shaping guidance …

Throttleable Gox/Abs Launch Assist Hybrid Rocket Motor For Small Scale Air Launch Platform, Zachary S. Spurrier

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The ability for an aircraft-based launch platform to place an orbital payload onto a nominal launch trajectory at a higher energy state -- altitude, velocity, flight path angle, and azimuth --using highly-efficient air breathing propulsion instead of a much lower-efficiency rocket system, offers the potential for a significantly smaller launch vehicle. An airborne platform also provides the ability to launch from multiple locations and allows for significantly increased "system responsiveness." The NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s Towed Glider Air-Launch System (TGALS) is a small-scale flight research project investigating the feasibility for a remotely-piloted, towed, glider system to act as a …

Development Of A Three-Dimensional High-Order Strand-Grids Approach, Oisin Tong

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The strand-Cartesian grid approach is a unique method of generating and computing fluid dynamic simulations. The strand-Cartesian approach provides highly desirable qualities of fully-automatic grid generation and high accuracy. This work focuses on development of a high-accuracy methodology (high-order scheme) on strand grids for two and three dimensions.

In this work, the high-order scheme is extended to high-Reynolds number computations in both two and three dimensions with the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model and the Menter SST turbulence model. In addition, a simple limiter is explored to allow the high-order scheme to accurately predict discontinuous flows.

Extensive verification and validation is conducted …

The Design Of A Racing Simulator: A Three-Phase User Testing Approach, Jakob E. Rouleau, Eric J. Wach

Human Factors and Applied Psychology Student Conference

No abstract provided.

Preliminary Design Tools In Turbomachinery: Non-Uniformly Spaced Blade Rows, Multistage Interaction, Unsteady Radial Waves, And Propeller Horizontal-Axis Turbine Optimization, Yujun Leng

Open Access Dissertations

Turbomachinery flow fields are inherently unsteady and complex which makes the related CFD analyses computationally intensive. Physically based preliminary design tools are desirable for parametric studies early in the design stage, and to provide deep physical insight and a good starting point for the later CFD analyses. Four analytical/semi-analytical models are developed in this study: 1) a generalized flat plate cascade model for investigating the unsteady aerodynamics of a blade row with non-uniformly spaced blades; 2) a multistage interaction model for investigating rotor-stator interactions; 3) an analytical solution for quantifying the impeller wake convection and pressure wave propagating between a …

Improving Damage Tolerance Of Composite Sandwich Structures Subjected To Low Velocity Impact Loading: Experimental And Numerical Analysis, Ravi B. Gondaliya

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Sandwich structures with composite facing skins have seen applications in variety of sectors including aerospace and automobile, owing to their high specific mechanical properties. However, there is a need to develop better damage tolerant sandwich structures since conventional composite facing skins exhibit low impact resistance in the transverse direction. Here, composite skin sandwich structures with three different impact resistant core materials were fabricated and tested both experimentally and numerically. Neat CFRP and 2024-T3 aluminum alloy sheets were also investigated. Cores utilizing impact resistant D3O® were found to have very favorable weight specific energy absorbing properties at higher impact velocities as …

Nonlinear Analysis Of Balance Data In The Easter Seals Adult Day Services Population, Taylor Marie Schemmel

Honors Theses

81.1 million adults are expected to be affected by dementia in 2040. Individuals with dementia are twice as likely to fall as healthy individuals and three times as likely to sustain an injury during a fall. Unfortunately, current fall prevention techniques in place for cognitively healthy older adults are not as effective for those with dementia. The objective of this study was to examine balance differences between individuals of varying cognitive ability utilizing Easter Seals Adult Day Services. All study participants completed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Clinical assessments were done in conjunction with static posturography data collection on a …

The Decomposition Of Hydroxylammonium Nitrate Under Vacuum Conditions, Gregory A. Neff

Masters Theses

This research investigates the decomposition of the ionic liquid: hydroxylammonium nitrate (HAN), under vacuum conditions. All research was conducted at the Aerospace Laboratory for Plasma Experiments (ALPE) at Western Michigan University. Hydroxylammonium nitrate solution 24% wt. in H2O was used consistently throughout this research. A variety of temperatures and pressures ranging from 23°C to 645°C and 6E-3 Torr to 4 Torr, respectively, were used to decompose HAN. The primary gaseous species resulting from these decomposition conditions are N2O, NO, and trace amounts of NO2. The formation of H2O, and N2 is conditional on the experimental conditions, and the formation of …

Experimental Investigation Of Turbulent Structures And Non-Equilibrium Effects In Axial Wake Vortices Via Particle Image Velocimetry, Jeffry William Ely

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Vortices are a common phenomenon in fluid flows that arise as kinetic energy dissipates into heat via viscous interaction. They arise naturally at large scales in the form of dust devils, tornadoes, and as a counter-rotating vortex pair in the wake of aircraft. It is important to understand the conditions leading to their formation, their duration, and their dissipation in order to forecast or prevent undesirable effects. Among these deleterious effects is a decrease in safety of aircraft operations in the wake of other aircraft, an extremely common situation at airports around the world. A large number of mathematical models …

A Hybrid Position Feedback Controller For Bistable Structures, Mehmet R. Simsek

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Bistability is the property of structures showing the ability to attain two statically stable states. Due to dynamic and static advantages such as no energy demand at stable positions and providing higher deflections compared to a monostable structure, bistability may be appealing in control surface design for aircraft structures and load alleviation for wind turbine blades. The dynamics of bistable structures is nonlinear because of the snap-through occurring during the cross-well oscillation between two stable states. A new control strategy called hybrid position feedback control is developed based on the conventional positive position control to exploit linear dynamics of bistable …

Development Of Design A Drop-In Hydrogen Fueling Station To Support The Early Market Buildout Of Hydrogen Infrastructure, Abdulhakim Amer A. Agll, Tarek A. Hamad, Yousif M. Hamad, Sushrut G. Bapat, John W. Sheffield

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper provides a design of a drop-in hydrogen fueling station. Drop-in stations are expected to be an important factor in the introduction of hydrogen fueling infrastructure. The stations not only allow a streamlined introduction of hydrogen in the vehicle fueling infrastructure, but also, acts as mini pilot plants that can allow for detailed control studies. The effect of the location and availability of utilities, the closeness to residential area, unintended safety concerns, people outlook towards hydrogen, etc. are some of the factors that can be readily studied with such drop-in stations. The proposed design of a drop-in station mainly …

A Study On Flow Development In An Apu-Style Inlet And Its Effect On Centrifugal Compressor Performance, Fangyuan Lou

Open Access Dissertations

The objectives of this research were to investigate the flow development inside an APU-style inlet and its effect on centrifugal compressor performance. The motivation arises from the increased applications of gas turbine engines installed with APU-style inlets such as unmanned aerial vehicles, auxiliary power units, and helicopters. The inlet swirl distortion created from these complicated inlet systems has become a major performance and operability concern. To improve the integration between the APU-style inlet and gas turbine engines, better understanding of the flow field in the APU-style inlet and its effect on gas turbine is necessary.

A research facility for the …