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Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

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Articles 271 - 277 of 277

Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering

Design Of A Mobile Underwater Charging System, Brian R. Page Jan 2016

Design Of A Mobile Underwater Charging System, Brian R. Page

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are extremely capable vehicles for numerous ocean related missions. AUVs are energy limited, resulting in short mission endurance on the scale of hours to days. Underwater Gliders (UGs) are able to operate on the order of months to years by using nontraditional propulsion methods. UGs, however, are unable to perform missions requiring high speed or direct forward motion due to the nature of their buoyancy driven motion. This work reviews the current state of the art in recharging AUVs and offers an underwater recharging network concept at a significantly reduced cost to traditional methods. The solution …


Competition Vehicle Based Intake Manifold Design, Joshua N. Matiash Jan 2016

Competition Vehicle Based Intake Manifold Design, Joshua N. Matiash

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A competitive vehicle in Formula SAE needs to be easy for unskilled drivers to extract the maximum performance from. This requires a predictable and manageable torque curve. This report details the development of an intake manifold for a Formula SAE car from a vehicle-based approach to produce this manageable and predictable torque. The current vehicle was instrumented and driven on a representative track to determine the usage of available torque. Based on these findings an ideal torque curve was chosen that favored increased torque at upper engine speed ranges and decreased torque at lower engine speed ranges. A 1-D engine …


Comparative Analysis Of Locally Available Materials For Treadle Pump Seals In Senegal, West Africa, Brennan Tymrak Jan 2016

Comparative Analysis Of Locally Available Materials For Treadle Pump Seals In Senegal, West Africa, Brennan Tymrak

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

For rural farmers in Senegal, West Africa, pulling water for irrigation can be a laborious but necessary task during the dry season to earn income from vegetable gardening. Traditional water pulling methods are inexpensive but require great physical effort, while modern machines decrease the labor burden but at a high financial cost. This study looked at an intermediate water pulling technology, the treadle pump, and how it could be improved to become more desirable for use in agricultural irrigation. A treadle pump was built and tested during field work in a rural Senegalese village. Observations from field testing prompted a …


Anthropomorphic Robotic Ankle-Foot Prosthesis With Active Dorsiflexion- Plantarflexion And Inversion-Eversion, Evandro Ficanha Jan 2015

Anthropomorphic Robotic Ankle-Foot Prosthesis With Active Dorsiflexion- Plantarflexion And Inversion-Eversion, Evandro Ficanha

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The main goal of the research presented in this paper is the development of a powered ankle-foot prosthesis with anthropomorphic characteristics to facilitate turning, walking on irregular grounds, and reducing secondary injuries on bellow knee amputees. The research includes the study of the gait in unimpaired human subjects that includes the kinetics and kinematics of the ankle during different types of gait, in different gait speeds at different turning maneuvers. The development of a robotic ankle-foot prosthesis with two active degrees of freedom (DOF) controlled using admittance and impedance controllers is presented. Also, a novel testing apparatus for estimation of …


Transient Thermoelectric Supercooling: Isosceles Current Pulses From A Response Surface Perspective And The Performance Effects Of Pulse Cooling A Heat Generating Mass, Alfred Piggott Jan 2015

Transient Thermoelectric Supercooling: Isosceles Current Pulses From A Response Surface Perspective And The Performance Effects Of Pulse Cooling A Heat Generating Mass, Alfred Piggott

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

With increased public interest in protecting the environment, scientists and engineers aim to improve energy conversion efficiency. Thermoelectrics offer many advantages as thermal management technology. When compared to vapor compression refrigeration, above approximately 200 to 600 watts, cost in dollars per watt as well as COP are not advantageous for thermoelectrics. The goal of this work was to determine if optimized pulse supercooling operation could improve cooling capacity or efficiency of a thermoelectric device. The basis of this research is a thermal-electrical analogy based modeling study using SPICE. Two models were developed. The first model, a standalone thermocouple with no …


Elementary Assessments And Simulations Based Proposals For New Heat Transfer Correlations And Flow Regime Maps For Annular/Stratified Regime Of Shear Driven Internal Condensing Flows, Siddharth Ravikumar Jan 2015

Elementary Assessments And Simulations Based Proposals For New Heat Transfer Correlations And Flow Regime Maps For Annular/Stratified Regime Of Shear Driven Internal Condensing Flows, Siddharth Ravikumar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Contemporary cooling applications necessitate the use of mm-scale shear driven flow condenser designs which also need to ensure substantial heat transfer rates for a wide range of flow conditions. Some modern shear driven flow condensers must meet the requirements of small size and large heat flux removal capability for variety of flow conditions. For this, effective estimates of heat transfer rate correlations and correlations for estimating the length of the annular regime are essential. Existing heat transfer correlations are built based on semi-empirical approaches which are primarily supported by large data sets, which are often mixed with insufficient explanation and …


Development And Operation Of A Mobile Test Facility For Education, Christopher Davis Jan 2015

Development And Operation Of A Mobile Test Facility For Education, Christopher Davis

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The automotive industry saw a large shift towards vehicle electrification after the turn of the century. It became necessary to ensure that new and existing engineers were qualified to design and calibrate these new systems. To ensure this training, Michigan Tech received a grant to develop a curriculum based around vehicle electrification. As part of this agenda, the Michigan Tech Mobile Laboratory was developed to provide hands-on training for professional engineers and technicians in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle electrification. The Mobile Lab has since then increased the scope of the delivered curriculum to include other automotive areas and even …