Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Mems 4110: Arduino-Controlled Precise Water Distribution System, Jack M. Williams, Joe Sieracki, Nina Woodward

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Christina Youngepeter is a Graduate Student of Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is studying an ancient plant that fell out of use after 1400 CE, whose ideal watering conditions are lost to time. To better characterize the plant, Christina is running an experiment to determine the ideal watering conditions for plant development. This involves watering sets of the plant with different volumes of water twice a day. The different volumes of water received by the groups of plants are 933 mL, 833 mL, 733 mL, 617 mL, 517 mL, and 417 mL. The acceptable percent error in …

Mems 4110: Trash-E (Terrain-Adaptive Remote Autonomous Sanitation Hauling Engineer), Jackson R. Weisbard, Raza Rabbani, Dhruv Goel, Kj Kernan

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The TRASH-E (Terrain-Adaptive Remote Autonomous Sanitation Hauling Engineer) project was created to compete in the 2025 ASME Student Design Challenge. For 2025, the ASME SDC asked for the development of a remotecontrolled robot that could collect and deposit trash from receptacles placed around a miniature city. The robot had to adhere to specific size and weight constraints, as well as obey traffic laws in the same manner as a real driver operating a motor vehicle.

Mems 4110: Air Hockey Table Physics Education Exhibit, Olaoluwa J. Adeniji, Salomon Dessalines, Gyvnn Mendenhall

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This project centers on creating an educational air-hockey exhibit designed for use in a science museum. The goal of the device is to transform a familiar game into a hands-on demonstration of basic physics and engineering concepts such as motion, momentum, energy transfer, and impact forces. Through discussions with our customer, Professor Potter, we established that the exhibit must balance two priorities: it must be fun and intuitive for visitors of all ages, and it must provide meaningful real-time feedback that helps users understand the science behind the experience.

Mems 4110: Asme Waste Collection Challenge, Leslie Alfaro, Cathy Zhao, Bari Diamond, Obike Anwisye

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

For this project, our goal was to design and build a remote-controlled wastecollection robot that could pick up trash bins and deliver their contents to a dumpsite while staying within the strict rules of the ASME challenge. The robot had to fit inside a 50 cm cube, drive through six-inch lanes, follow traffic rules, and be fully controlled by a six-channel RC controller. These constraints shaped almost every decision we made throughout the design process.

Mems 4110: Improving Restaurant Efficiency: Automatic Egg Peeler, Shanice Isimbi Mutabazi, Kyle Bryant Okui, Max Ari Siefert, Lani Fancesca Espinel

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Neon Greens is a salad restaurant in St. Louis, MO that focuses on serving fresh, locally sourced ingredients. One of their signature menu items includes soft and hard-boiled eggs, which are used in large quantities every day. Currently, these eggs are peeled by hand, which can be slow, inconsistent, and difficult to keep up with during busy hours. Because of this, Neon Greens needs a faster and more reliable way to peel eggs without increasing labor. Our project aims to design a device that can peel eggs automatically, reduce prep time, and stay safe and easy to clean in a …

Mems 4110: The Egg Peeler, Susanna Yeh, Jessica Arnold, Peter Nesin, Finn Mcnamee

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The purpose of this project is to assist the customer Neon Greens in accelerating their food preparation time by designing an egg peeler device. To have a better understanding of the customer needs and expectations, the design team participated in an interview with Neon Greens to address their vision and desires for this device. For the semester-long project, the team underwent various prototype stages, including the proof of concept, the initial prototype, and the final prototype. Our final design consists of a hopper that holds a batch of eggs on top and drops two eggs at a time, one on …

Mems 4110: Science Museum Bernoulli's Demo, Emma Sloan, Carter Hahnfeldt, Luke Mccann

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report outlines the design and prototyping process of the Science Museum Bernoulli’s Demo (SMBD), a capstone project for MEMS 4110 Senior Design Project at Washington University in St. Louis. The SMBD is a fun game for a children’s science museum designed to demonstrate how the exit velocity of water from a pipe changes based on the pipe diameter. The design intends to teach kids about Bernoulli’s principle by allowing them to choose from two different sized pipes to spray water at a target. The key aspect of the game is that the water flows more slowly out of the …

Mems 4110: Precise Water Distribution System, Morelia R. Reyes-Perez, Jp Torack, Jakob Ayala

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This project focuses on designing and prototyping an automatic precise watering system to support plant research conducted in the Washington University greenhouse. The customer, graduate student Christina Youngpeter, needs a reliable method for delivering accurately measured water volumes to individual plants as part of a study on hydration effects. Manual watering can be time consuming, our system will provide a programmable, repeatable, and low maintenance solution.

Mems 4110: Interactive Racecar Dynamics Exhibit, Leonardo Gomes, Hunter Rocker, Joseph Norris, Jack Coode

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Visitors at science museums often struggle to understand how launch speed, lane choice, and banked-curve dynamics influence a car’s trajectory. Existing educational exhibits rarely provide repeatable measurements or clear physics demonstrations. This project addresses that gap by creating an interactive racecar dynamics exhibit with a controlled launcher, 3D-printed banked track geometry, and optical timing gates. The goal is to give users measurable feedback on velocity, lane behavior, and motion through a 31° banked turn while maintaining safety, durability, and fast reset time for continuous hands-on learning.

Mems 4110: Soft Boiled Egg Peeler, Nina Fischer, Ruth Mellin, Jack Salamon, Malaya Hill

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report outlines the design and evaluation of a hard-boiled egg–peeling device developed for the Saint Louis restaurant Neon Greens. The restaurant prepares an average of 150 soft-boiled eggs daily for dishes such as the Protein Salad. They requested a device able to autonomously peel 150 eggs per hour with minimal employee involvement.

Mems 4110: Rapid Drink Chiller, Aidan F. Moriarty, John Babineau, Levi Gingerich, Quinn Close

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The purpose of this document is to outline the purpose and function of the rapid drink chiller device. This device is designed to replace traditional portable drink cooling methods, such as traditional styrofoam coolers, fridges, etc. Traditional methods require the transport and inclusion of ice, and require overly long cooling times, with the exception traditional fridges which are non-portable. The rapid drink chiller is designed to be light and compact in order to maximize transportability, accomplished via an all foam insulation construction around a waterproof box. The box is filled with a water-ethanol solution which is cooled to extremely low …

Mems 4110: Precise Water Distribution System, Fadhimah Mohamed, Duyen Nguyen, Citlalli Sanchez-Ayala

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Greenhouse research requires precise, repeatable watering to maintain consistent experimental conditions. As plant counts scale to 150–360 pots, manual watering becomes inefficient, inconsistent. This project aims to design an automated irrigation system that reliably delivers controlled water volumes to an initial set of 36 pots, operates under greenhouse conditions with minimal user intervention, and provides a scalable foundation for future expansion.

Mems 4110: Egg Peeler Group L1, Brian Hau, Alex Kenn Lee, Aisha Bah, Shanaelle Nabatmama

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Neon Greens is a quick-serve salad concept located in St. Louis, MO. Part hydroponic farm and
part restaurant, they focus on growing a majority of their greens in-house, and emphasize
transparency in food systems.
In recent months, they added a ‘Protein Caesar’ salad to the menu. That salad features two
‘jammy’ boiled eggs which are cut in half. Staff at Neon Greens steam eggs precisely in their
Combi oven and shock them to stop the cooking process. They then peel those eggs by hand.
On some days, they must process >100 eggs, which can take up to 1.5 hours of …

Mems 4110: Remotely Deployed Banner, Amiel Josiah Mari B. Silbol, Maxwell A. Fargo, Brant M. Weir, Elias Barro

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This project works in tangent with the Design, Build, Fly club at Washington University in St. Louis as one of the specific challenges required for the 2026 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' national competition. A banner must be stowed, deployed, and released during flight and must not interfere with the existing flight mechanics of the remote control aircraft.

Mems 4110: Egg Project, Rebecca Leighann Boone, Courtney Davis, Bebel Trani

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Peeling hard-boiled eggs by hand is a time-consuming and tedious task that often results in dimples and cracks in the final product. Many chefs and home cooks have tried techniques, from boiling the eggs in baking soda to slipping off egg shells using a spoon, to perfect the peeling process. However, these attempts often fall short by either altering the taste of the egg or extending the amount of time and labor. In the restaurant business, having employees peel eggs for long periods of time is costly. The local St. Louis salad restaurant, Neon Greens, is selling a new protein-dense …

Mems 4110: Dbf Deployable Banner, Julia Peppe, Danny Bruns, Sarah Donner, Michael Safier

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Create a device that stores a banner in an RC aircraft that can be remotely deployed to be towed and released upon command.

Mems 4110: Dbf Banner, Pachie Ackerman-Bennett, Joshua Paul Laue, Nazifa Younus

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The DBFBanner is a project made for the WashU Design / Build / Fly club. After interviewing DBF club president Sarah Donner, we interpreted the club’s needs as: (1) a banner that could achieve vertical stability in flight; (2) the banner could deploy and release remotely; (3) the banner and associated components were as light as possible. We went through several design iterations, including mathematical and CAD models, mockups, prototypes, and testing apparatus. Many designs were considered, including designs based on linear motion and collapsible trusses. We arrived at a design that used a servo motor to rotate a 3D-printed …

Mems 4110: Air Cannon Launcher Demo, Jackson Strauss, Avery Cohen, Wilson Gao, Jack Galloway

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

For our senior design class (MEMS 4110) at Washington University in St. Louis, we were tasked with creating a demonstration for the St. Louis Science Center that demonstrated an engineering principle or concept. The Science Center functions as a science-oriented museum and saw more than 600,000 visitors in 2024. For our demonstration, we wanted to showcase the principles of kinematic motion. Kinematic motion is study of the motion of objects without considering applied forces. Additionally, when the acceleration of an object is either zero or held constant, the trajectory path that the object follows can be described by a few …

Mems 4110: Asme Waste Collection Challenge, Evelyn Madrigal, Letty Patino, Bing Ling, Michael Avaliani

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Make a remote-controlled vehicle that can traverse the course below (obeying traffic laws), collect garbage units from collection bins and deliver the garbage units to a receptacle.

Mems 4110: N1 Precise Water Distribution System, Lillian Salter, Ye Huang, Elaine Wang, Joy Luo

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The aim of the project is to construct a precise water distribution system for anthropology graduate student Christina Youngpeter, who is studying the impact of hydration levels on the growth of quinoa plants. As her experiment grows in scale, she increasingly needs a system that can measure and distribute water for her, saving hours otherwise spent meticulously measuring water for 36 plants and counting. The system must measure water accurately and distribute it to the plants cleanly and efficiently. It should also be scalable and autonomous, requiring minimal human intervention.

Mems 4110: Asme Waste Collection Challenge, Theo A. Mass, Grant Kaplan, Emanoeel Ghabrial, Joseph Gillett

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The Efficient Jolley Trash Grabber (EJTG) is a teleoperated vehicle adherent to the modified rules of the 2025-26 ASME Student Design Competition, hosted in MEMS 4110: Mechanical Engineering Design Project. The vehicle design was informed first by understanding the problem of waste collection. Patents, existing devices, user needs, and relevant codes and standards were reviewed to survey potential design approaches. The concept for the vehicle was generated by setting functionality, and brainstorming solutions to accomplish each goal. A mock-up vehicle was created using available materials, and four complete concepts were drawn each with a different design. Rigorous methods were used …

Mems 4110: Conservation Of Angular Momentum Demo, Matthew Brouillet, Iyanu Akinyemi, Mingxuan Bi, Matthew Gimbel

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

A demo was built to serve as a hands-on experience for reinforcing concepts behind the conservation of angular momentum.

Mems 4110: Parachute Snatch Force Tester, Adam Mallalieu, Ethan Riak, Jackson Shurman, Ryan Schmadtke

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report discusses the design, development, and testing of a parachute snatch force tester for MEMS 411 Senior Design. The device is for the WURocketry Team, and aims to measure the peak force exerted on the rocket bulkhead during parachute ejection. This peak force is known as the snatch force, and is incredibly important when it comes to maintaining safety, improving performance, and material selection during the rocket’s production process. Current methods for testing and recording this snatch force are limited, so our team aimed to create a simple and cost effective solution. Our design utilizes a vertical support that …

Mems 4110: Asme Challenge, Jon Cossman, Jonathan Young, Nate Nowel

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of this project was to design and assemble a remote controlled device for a competition that can maneuver through a course, collect trash units from 3D-printed trash bins, and bring them to a receptacle at the end of the course. Important factors to consider in the design involved ensuring it followed traffic laws through the course, making sure it could operate multiple times, and fit within price and space constraints. Prototypes were tested against the ability to deliver 75 percent of trash units within 5 minutes, 50 percent of trash units within 5 minutes without any traffic violations, …

Mems 411: The Ez-Push Fsae E-Assisted Pushbar, Ian Snider, Hunter Tate, Erik Lillegard, Maxwell Wrasman

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

WashU Racing needs a device that will help them transport their Formula SAE car to and from their garage/paddock during events and testing when the car is unable to move under its own power. Pushing the car is very exhausting and requires at least 2 pairs of people, rotating in and out, to push the car. An electronically assisted push bar would only require two people to push the car and wouldn't experience exhaustion due to pushing the car. This device will function similarly to a shopping cart tug while also functioning as a rear jack for the vehicle that …

Mems 411: Timed Mosquito Egg Container, Daniel Nordquist, Preston Gee, Stephanos Mavrommatis

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

To aid in the war against mosquitoes, PHD candidate Lauren Johnson tasked this groups with developing a device to help study egg laying patterns. The goal is to create a device that can cut off access to tea water (an attractive breeding site) at specified time intervals in order to observe the effects of daylight and temperatures on mosquito egg laying behavior.

Mems 411: A Diving Surface Breaker The Jetcycle, Amanda Mclaughlin, Nicholas Harris, Alice Hu, Steven Xiao

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Create a diving surface breaker for the WashU swimming and Diving team.

Mems 411: Dbf Wind Tunnel, Jeremy Choh, Stefan Hester, David Howard, Yang Yang

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design, Build, Fly (DBF) is a student-run engineering team at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) that designs aircraft for flight competitions. Before assembling the final product, DBF runs numerous simulations on prototypes to understand the effects of drag and lift on the designed shape. The lift and drag parameters are important to aircraft design, as DBF hopes to optimize flight performance during competitions. However, simulations require computational power, are theoretical at best, and may inaccurately represent real-life situations. Preferably, DBF can use physical testing that captures prototype performance with more qualitative details.

Senior Design Group Z approaches DBF's needs …

Mems 411: Timed Mosquito Egg Container Design Project, Paige Warren, Witt Ciesla, Ethan Sobel

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of this project is to design and construct a device that allows for the controlled study of mosquito egg-laying behavior in response to artificial light and temperature variations. Specifically, the device will limit access to cups of standing water, which serve as egg-laying sites, to preprogrammed times of day over a 7-day period.
The device should ensure the following:

• Control Access: The container should be open and closed at predetermined intervals, allowing mosquitoes to access the cups of standing water only during these times.
• Programmability: It should be easy for a novice to specify the opening and closing …

Mems 411: Group V Ball Bearing Sorter, Matthew Hernandez, Sean Huffert, Ethan Delair

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

After a semester of hard work, Team V is proud to unveil its finished prototype for the 2024-2025 ASME Student Design Competition. The theme of this challenge was "Assembly Line Sorting and Packaging." The goal of this challenge was to make a device able to satisfy the criteria of sorting between six different bearings of different sizing and material properties, and meeting spatial and time limitations. This device needed to be fast, accurate, compact, and able to sort in bulk. Team V feels like we have met most of these requirements with our final design prototype. For this project, a …