Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2009, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Each student in his or her senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. The senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real-world solution to an engineering challenge.

A highlight of the year-long senior design project is the senior design competition. This competition, which usually takes place the week before finals each semester, helps focus the senior students on increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects.

Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on innovation, commercial …

Design, Reconstruction And Evaluation Of A Dynamometer For Quarter Scale, Samuel Sanchez

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This project discusses the design, reconstruction, and evaluation of a dynamometer. A new test stand for the Quarter Scale team would improve the testing of the engines and the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT). All the readings will be done electronically in order to provide the most accurate data collection. The dynamometer will be a closed hydraulic system for ease of use. This system will be able to test all of Quarter Scale engines. The data collected will be used to determine which engines are in the best condition, and which may need to be fixed. With the new design, the …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, December 2009, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Imprinting Polymerfilm On Patterned Substrate, Li Tan, Yen-Peng Kong, Stella W. Pang, Albert F. Yee

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

A method of applying a pattern on a topography includes first applying a polymer film to an elastormer member, such as PDMS, to form a pad. The pad is then applied to a substrate having a varying topography under pressure. The polymer film is transferred to the substrate due to the plastic deformation of the polymer film under pressure compared to the elastic deformation of the PDMS member pulls away from the polymer layer, thereby depositing the polymer layer, thereby depositing the polymer layer upon the substrate.

Indentation Creep Analysis For Self Similar Indenters, Sandeep V. Thube

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In indentation creep experiments, it is difficult to characterize the mechanical properties of small size specimens using conventional methods. This study uses finite element modeling to investigate rate-sensitive deformation of materials with different hardness and strain rate sensitivities for self similar indenter tip geometries. The simulation model is developed using commercially available finite element software Abaqus/Standard. Our study investigates the difference between strain rate sensitivity of hardness (vH) and of flow stress (vu) and their relation to the hardness/modulus ratio. It reveals that the commonly held assumption that vH = vu is violated except for materials with low hardness/modulus …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, September 2009, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Doppler Broadening Analysis Of Steel Specimens Using Accelerator Based In Situ Pair Production, V. Makarashvili, Douglas P. Wells, Ajit K. Roy

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy (PAS) techniques can be utilized as a sensitive probe of defects in materials. Studying these microscopic defects is very important for a number of industries in order to predict material failure or structural integrity. We have been developing gamma‐induced pair‐production techniques to produce positrons in thick samples ( ∼4–40 g/cm2, or ∼0.5–5 cm in steel). These techniques are called ‘Accelerator‐based Gamma‐induced Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy’ (AG‐PAS). We have begun testing the capabilities of this technique for imaging of defect densities in thick structural materials. As a first step, a linear accelerator (LINAC) was employed to produce photon beams …

The Effects Of Combined Compression And Aging On The Properties Of Glassy Polycarbonate, Kyle W. Strabala

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Physical aging and plastic flow are known to cause changes in the properties of glassy polycarbonate (PC). Although the individual effects of physical aging and plastic flow have been studied, the combined mechanical and thermal effects have yet to be evaluated for PC at large plastic strains. This work is the first characterization of the combined effects in PC of large plastic flow followed by thermal (physical) aging. To conduct this study, samples were prepared with different extents of plastic compressive strain, up to approximately 50% engineering strain, followed by thermal aging up to 135 °C, with various …

Multiscale Modeling Of Glass Fiber Reinforced Viscoelastic Polymers Subjected To Impact Loads, Victor Ferreira Teixeira

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

New applications for polymer composite materials are occurring at a rapid pace today. These include structural components in the energy, transportation, and biomedical fields.  Many if not all of these new applications will require that part performance is insured with some degree of sustainable damage.  With the growth in the use of composite structures comes the necessity of improved methodologies that can predict more accurately the life and serviceability conditions of composite parts. Damage mechanics in two-phase composite materials is a very complex problem that has challenged researchers for many years. However, most of the available models perform only a …

Flexible Electronics Using Ion Implantation To Adhere Polymer Substrate To Single Crystal Silicon Substrate, Terry L. Alford, Douglas C. Thompson Jr., Hyunchul Kim, Michael A. Nastasi, James W. Mayer, Daniel Adams

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

An electronic apparatus uses a single crystalline silicon Substrate disposed adjacent to a flexible substrate. The electronic apparatus may be a flexible flat panel display, or a flexible printed circuit board. The flexible substrate can be made from polymer, plastic, paper, flexible glass, and stainless steel. The flexible substrate is bonded to the single crystalline substrate using an ion implantation process. The ion implantation process involves the use of a noble gas Such as hydrogen, helium, Xenon, and krypton. A plurality of semiconductor devices are formed on the single crystalline silicon Substrate. The semi conductor devices may be thin film …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, June 2009, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Performance Analysis Of Coal-Fired Boiler And Natural Gas Fired Boiler At Morehead State University, Devender Banne

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science & Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Devender Banne on May 4, 2009.

Multiscale Modeling Of Impact On Heterogeneous Viscoelastic Solids With Evolving Microcracks, Flavio V. Souza

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Multiscale computational techniques play a major role in solving problems related to viscoelastic composite materials due to the complexities inherent to these materials. In the present work, a numerical procedure for multiscale modeling of impact on heterogeneous viscoelastic solids containing evolving microcracks is proposed in which the (global scale) homogenized viscoelastic incremental constitutive equations have the same form as the local scale viscoelastic incremental constitutive equations, but the homogenized tangent constitutive tensor and the homogenized incremental history dependent stress tensor depend on the amount of damage accumulated at the local scale. Furthermore, the developed technique allows the computation of the …

The Effect Of Silicon Content On Impact Toughness Of T91 Grade Steels, Ajit K. Roy, Pankaj Kumar, Debajyoti Maitra

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

The impact resistance of silicon (Si)-containing modified 9Cr-1Mo steels has been investigated within a temperature regime of -40 to 440°C using the Charpy method. The results indicate that the energies absorbed in fracturing the tested specimens were substantially lower at temperatures of -40, 25, and 75°C compared to those at elevated temperatures. Lower impact energies and higher ductile-to-brittle-transition-temperatures (DBTTs) were observed with the steels containing 1.5 and 1.9 wt.% Si. The steels containing higher Si levels exhibited both ductile and brittle failures at elevated temperatures. However, at lower temperatures, brittle failures characterized by cleavage and intergranular cracking were observed for …

Identification Of Multiple Oscillation States Of Carbon Nanotube Tipped Cantilevers Interacting With Surfaces In Dynamic Atomic Force Microscopy, Mark Strus, Arvind Raman

Birck and NCN Publications

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have gained increased interest in dynamic atomic force microscopy (dAFM) as sharp, flexible, conducting, nonreactive tips for high-resolution imaging, oxidation lithography, and electrostatic force microscopy. By means of theory and experiments we lay out a map of several distinct tapping mode AFM oscillation states for CNT tipped AFM cantilevers: namely, noncontact attractive regime oscillation, intermittent contact with CNT slipping or pinning, or permanent contact with the CNT in point or line contact with the surface while the cantilever oscillates with large amplitude. Each state represents fundamentally different origins of CNT-surface interactions, CNT tip-substrate dissipation, and phase contrast …

Computational Model For Predicting Nonlinear Viscoelastic Damage Evolution In Materials Subjected To Dynamic Loading, Flavio V. Souza, Yong-Rak Kim, George A. Gazonas, David H. Allen

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Many inelastic solids accumulate numerous cracks before failure due to impact loading, thus rendering any exact solution of the IBVP untenable. It is therefore useful to construct computational models that can accurately predict the evolution of damage during actual impact/dynamic events in order to develop design tools for assessing performance characteristics. This paper presents a computational model for predicting the evolution of cracking in structures subjected to dynamic loading. Fracture is modeled via a nonlinear viscoelastic cohesive zone model. Two example problems are shown: one for model validation through comparison with a one-dimensional analytical solution for dynamic viscoelastic debonding, and …

Effect Of Sodium And Absorber Thickness On Cigs2 Thin Film Solar Cells, Parag Vasekar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chalcopyrites are important contenders among solar cell technologies due to direct band gap and higher absorption coefficient. CuIn1-xGaxS2 (CIGS2) thin-film solar cells are of interest for space power applications because of near optimum bandgap of 1.5 eV for AM0 solar radiation outside the earth's atmosphere. The record efficiency of 11.99% has been achieved on a 2.7 µm CIGS2 thin film prepared by sulfurization at FSEC PV Materials Laboratory. Since CIGS2 films are typically grown in copper-rich regime, excess cuprous sulfide which helps in the formation of CIGS2 is etched away. This makes CIGS2 nearly stoichiometric. However, it is difficult to …

Impacting Testing Of High Temperature Ceramics Through The Use Of A Vitiated Heater For Hot And Cold Fire Collisions, Adrian Trejo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Material testing is a crucial step during the design process as particular materials serve as safety and life saving conditions. In this study, a MoSi2 is chosen as the target specimen to undergo impact under high temperatures. An impact apparatus is designed and constructed for the purpose of propelling alumina particles at high velocities. A nozzle using compressed nitrogen gas is used to fire the particle at the desired velocities. Due to the possibility of thermal shock occurring at higher temperatures, a separate nozzle utilizing vitiation heating is designed to fire the particle at equally higher temperatures to prove the …

Effects Of Aggregate Structure On Hot-Mix Asphalt Rutting Performance In Low Traffic Volume Local Pavements, Yong-Rak Kim, Hee Mun Park, Francisco Thiago Sacramento Aragão, Jamilla Emi Sudo Lutif

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of mix gradations associated with the Superpave restricted zone on rutting potential specifically for low traffic volume roadways. Although the elim-ination of the restricted zone requirement in Superpave mix design is highly recommended, some questions still remain unanswered as the research conclusions supporting the elimination of the re-stricted zone were largely made for medium to high traffic volume roadways, where aggregates are highly crushed and of good quality. The applicability of such research conclusions based on high traffic volume mixes needs to be verified for low volume mixes because many …

Convergence, Adaptive Refinement, And Scaling In 1d Peridynamics, Florin Bobaru Ph.D., Mijia Yabg Ph.D., Leonardo F. Alves M.S., Stewart A. Silling Ph.D., Ebrahim Askari Ph.D., Jifeng Xu Ph.D.

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Faculty Publications

We introduce here adaptive refinement algorithms for the non-local method peridynamics, which was proposed (in J. Mech. Phys. Solids 2000; 48:175–209) as a reformulation of classical elasticity for discontinuities and long-range forces. We use scaling of the micromodulus and horizon and discuss the particular features of adaptivity in peridynamics for which multiscale modeling and grid refinement are closely connected. We discuss three types of numerical convergence for peridynamics and obtain uniform convergence to the classical solutions of static and dynamic elasticity problems in 1D in the limit of the horizon going to zero. Continuous micromoduli lead to optimal rates of …

Comparison Of Fuzzy Clustering Methods And Their Applications To Geophysics Data, David J. Miller, Carl A. Nelson, Molly Boeka Cannon, Kenneth P. Cannon

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Fuzzy clustering algorithms are helpful when there exists a dataset with subgroupings of points having indistinct boundaries and overlap between the clusters. Traditional methods have been extensively studied and used on real-world data, but require users to have some knowledge of the outcome a priori in order to determine howmany clusters to look for. Additionally, iterative algorithms choose the optimal number of clusters based on one of several performance measures. In this study, the authors compare the performance of three algorithms (fuzzy c-means, Gustafson-Kessel, and an iterative version of Gustafson-Kessel) when clustering a traditional data set as well as real-world …

Experimental Investigation Of A Novel Blast Wave Mitigation Device, Zhenbi Su, Wen Peng, Zhaoyan Zhang, George Gogos, Reed Skaggs, Bryan Cheeseman, Chian Fong Yen

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

A novel blast wave mitigation device was investigated experimentally in this paper. The device consists of a pistoncylinder assembly. A shock wave is induced within the cylinder when a blast wave impacts on the piston. The shock wave propagates inside the device and is reflected repeatedly. The shock wave propagation process inside the device lengthens the duration of the force on the base of the device to several orders of magnitude of the duration of the blast wave, while it decreases the maximum pressure over an order of magnitude. Two types of experiments were carried out to study the blast …

Design Of Sea Water Heat Exchanger For Miniature Vapor Compression Cycle, James Hughes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent advances in the development of miniature vapor compression cycle components have created unique opportunities for heating and cooling applications, specifically to human physiological requirements that arise in extreme environments. Diving in very cold water between 1.7 and 5°C requires active heating because passive thermal insulation has proven inadequate for long durations. To maintain diver mobility and cognitive performance, it is desirable to provide 250 to 300 W of heat from an untethered power source. The use of a miniature vapor compression cycle reduces the amount of power (batteries or fuel cell) that the diver must carry by 2.5 times …

Droplet Flows In Microchannels Using Lattice Boltzmann Method, Amit Gupta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have widespread applications in medical, electronical and mechanical devices. These devices are characterized by the smallest dimension which is at least one micrometer and utmost one millimeter. Rapid progress in the manufacture and utilization of these microdevices has been achieved in the last decade. Current manufacturing techniques of such devices and channels include surface silicon micromachining; bulk silicon micromachining; lithography; electrodeposition and plastic molding; and electrodischarge machining (EDM). In recent years, electrostatic, magnetic, electromagnetic and thermal actuators, valves, gears and diaphragms of dimensions of hundred microns or less have been fabricated successfully. Sensors have been manufactured that …

Study Of The Effects Of Sodium And Absorber Microstructure For The Development Of Cuin1-Xgaxse2-Ysy Thin Film Solar Cell Using An Alternative Selenium Precursor, Vinaykumar Hadagali

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Thin film solar cells have the potential to be an important contributor to the world energy demand in the 21st century. CuInGaSe2 thin film solar cells have achieved the highest efficiency among all the thin film technologies. A steady progress has been made in the research and development of CuInSe2 based thin film solar cells. However, there are many issues that need to be addressed for the development of CuInSe2 based thin films solar cells. High price of PV modules has been a biggest factor impeding the growth of photovoltaic modules for terrestrial application. This thesis tries to address the …

Me-Em 2009 Annual Report, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Annual Reports

Table of Contents

• Energy Systems
• Health Systems
• Faculty & Staff
• Students
• Alumni
• Resources
• Graduates
• Publications
• ME-EM Community

The Role Of Silicon Content On Environmental Degradations Of T91 Steels, Ajit K. Roy, D. Maitra, Pankaj Kumar

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

T91 grade steels showed a gradual enhancement in tensile ductility at ambient temperature due to an increase in Si content from 0.5 to 2.0 weight percent (wt.%). However, the ultimate tensile strength was reduced only above 1.5 wt.% Si. The corrosion potential became more active in an acidic solution with increasing temperature. The cracking susceptibility in a similar environment under a slow-strain-rate (SSR) condition was enhanced at higher temperatures showing reduced ductility, time to failure, and true failure stress. Cathodic potentials applied to the test specimens in SSR testing caused an enhanced cracking tendency at 30 and 60°C, suggesting hydrogen …

Tensile Deformation Of A Nickel-Base Alloy At Elevated Temperatures, Ajit K. Roy, Anand Venkatesh, Vikram Marthandam

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

The results of tensile testing involving Waspaloy indicate that the failure strain was gradually reduced at temperatures ranging between ambient and 300 °C. Further, serrations were observed in the engineering stress versus strain diagrams in the temperature range of 300-600 °C. The reduced failure strain and the formation of serrations in these temperature regimes could be the result of dynamic strain aging of this alloy. The extent of work hardening due to plastic deformation was reduced at temperatures above 300 °C. A combination of ductile and intergranular brittle failures was seen at temperatures above 600 °C. γ′ was detected at …

Study Of Multibody Dynamics Using Matlab, Kalyani Soman

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Research in computational dynamics has gained importance in the past few years because of the demand for analysis and simulation of various multi-body systems in the growing mechanical and aerospace industry. These multi-body systems are made of individual bodies that are interconnected via mechanical joints. Mathematically, these joints that connect the bodies can be described as constraint equations imposed upon the motions of the involved free bodies. This process will result in an equation of motion expressed in the form of a differential-algebraic equation. It is the main objective of this thesis to develop a solution algorithm that can take …

Me-Em 2008 Annual Report, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Annual Reports

Table of Contents

• Engineering Education
• Students
• Alumni
• Resources
• Graduates
• Publications
• ME-EM Community