Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Design Of An Automatic Wood Trimming Machine, Van Ho, Nicholas Maskal, Andrew Rutland

Mechanical Engineering

This final design report, prepared for Sunrise Arts by the Cal Poly design team Mahogany Automation, details the year-long process in which the team of three engineering students designed and built an automated wooden -plank edge trimming machine that incorporates anti-jamming and continuous loading features. The team has examined current woodworking machines and features available on the industrial and commercial market, and used these as guides along with device requirements set by the project sponsor, Bruce Palmer. The focus has been on designing the simplest and most cost effective device that allows operators to make production runs of wooden slats …

Peripheral Artery Catheter Tracking System, Chris Blecher, Michael Lashore, Nhan Le

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Rifle And Shotgun Recoil Test System, Benjamin Canfield-Hershkowitz, Trevor Foster, William Meijer

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Trampoline And Bungee Fatigue-Test Machine, Andy Brock, Christopher D'Elia, Ryan Murphy

Mechanical Engineering

JumpSport, a Saratoga based recreational and fitness trampoline company, sponsored this senior project team towards the development of a fatigue-testing machine. The goal of this project was to iterate the previous machine JumpSport used for bungee cord, spring, and trampoline fatigue testing. Since minimal study had been conducted on these specific bungee cords, the fixture was designed to confirm the theoretical correlations for rubber and perform the final tests according to a strict protocol. Operating with a specific test protocol in mind will allow the data from multiple tests to be combined and analyzed statistically. With a design concept in …

Sodhana Environmental - Final Design Report, Eric Taylor, Corissa Bellis, Cody Perez, Cameron Zeller

Mechanical Engineering

A fully designed cost-effective, sustainable, toilet for the developing world.

Otto - The Wall Driving Platform, Cameron Venancio, Eric Mar, Kelvin Lei

Mechanical Engineering

A robotic wall-climbing robot.

Automated Foosball Table Year 1: Final Project Report, Juan David Gutierrez-Franco, John Inlow, Jesse Graham, Larry Huang

Mechanical Engineering

This project is a first iteration of an automated foosball table designed and created using servomotors provided by Yaskawa to create an interactive tradeshow display where guests can play against the algorithms developed in the PLC (programmable logic controller) controlling the servomotors. There will be a second iteration of the project done by a different team directly following this one. The motion components were selected with the intent to be able to surpass the reaction times and speeds of expert human players. There are a total of eight servomotors, four controlling linear actuators for translation of rods, and four controlling …

Prototype Device For The Detection Of Subsurface Peach Pit Fragments, Colby Lippincott, Hamilton Little, Rick Hayes, Elliot Wenzel

Mechanical Engineering

Peach pits can break during processing into several small fragments and are difficult to see and remove from the peach. Wawona Frozen Foods is asking for a fully designed, built and tested prototype that can detect these pit fragments with ease and speed. Our design uses an array of needles that puncture into a peach half. A pressure sensor measures the force on the needles and determines whether or not each needle hit the peach flesh or a pit fragment. The array of needles consists of 313 needles each with a diameter of 0.6 mm with a total array diameter …

Characterization Of Polyetherimide Under Static, Dynamic, And Multiple Impact Conditions, Bryan Zuanetti

HIM 1990-2015

The application of polymers in robust engineering designs is on the rise due to their excellent mechanical properties such as high fracture toughness, specific strength, durability, as well as, thermal and chemical resistances. Implementation of some advanced polymeric solids is limited due to the lack of available mechanical properties. In order for these materials to endure strenuous engineering designs it is vital to investigate their response in multiple loading rates and conditions. In this thesis, the mechanical response of polyethermide (PEI) is characterized under quasi-static, high strain rate, and multiple impact conditions. Standard tension, torsion, and compression experiments are performed …

Fracture Toughness Of A Hyperelastic Material During Surgical Cutting, Kevin Smith

HIM 1990-2015

Despite being one of the most important organs of vertebrates, the material properties of skin are also one of the most poorly understood. In the field of designing medical devices and surgical tools there are significant advantages to having a model that describes the interaction of forces between a blade tip and skin during surgical cutting. In general, skin can best be described as a composite layer consisting of a viscoelastic dermis with interwoven collagen and elastin fibers beneath a superficial epidermis. The purpose of this research is to study the fracture toughness of porcine skin during practical cutting applications, …

Development And Validation Of An Absorption Sensor For Time-Resolved Measurements Of Co And Co2, Kyle Thurmond

HIM 1990-2015

A sensor was developed for simultaneous measurements of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide fluctuations in internal combustion engine exhaust gases. This sensor utilizes low-cost and compact LEDs that emit in the 3-5[micro]m wavelength range which are more appropriate for practical applications than the more traditionally used lasers. An affordable, fast response sensor that can measure these gases has broad application that can lead to more efficient, fuel flexible engines and regulations of harmful emissions. LEDs have a more spectrally broad and diverging emission than lasers which presented many design challenges. The optical design software ZEMAX was utilized to overcome these …

Waveguiding Of Surface Phonon Polariton, Franklin Manene, Brian A. Lail, Edward C. Kinzel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Metal losses lead to unacceptably low propagation lengths in THz and LWIR waveguides. While SPP based waveguides provide relatively good confinement and attenuation in the near-IR and visible these are insufficiently bound to the surface in the THz and LWIR. We study using surface phonon polaritons for waveguiding at these frequencies. An eigenmode approach was applied to model a hybrid waveguide structure at λ=10.6 μm. The results show that phonon-coupled hybrid waveguide of silicon carbide BCB and gold exhibit enhanced propagation length and confinement at LWIR. © 2013 IEEE.

Burnout, No, Flame Temperature, And Radiant Intensity From Oxygen-Enriched Combustion Of A Hardwood Biomass, Joshua David Thornock

Theses and Dissertations

Increasing concern for energy sustainability has created motivation for the combustion of renewable, CO2 neutral fuels. Biomass co-firing with coal provides a means of utilizing the scaled efficiencies of coal with the lower supply availability of biomass. One of the challenges of co-firing is the burnout of biomass particles which are typically larger than coal but must be oxidized in the same residence time. Larger biomass particles also can increase the length of the radiative region and alter heat flux profiles. As a result, oxygen injection is being investigated as a means of improving biomass combustion performance.An Air Liquide designed …

Emg-Emg Coherence Analysis Of Elbow And Shoulder Muscles, Manu Stephen

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Motor coordination can be described by the activation of a few intermuscular coordination patterns, or muscle synergies. Muscle synergy can be defined as a relatively fixed pattern of activation across a set of muscles. The neural mechanisms underlying muscle synergies remain to be fairly unknown. Through a muscle synergy study [13], co-activation in muscle pairs was discovered through a non-negative matrix factorization: NMF) analysis. In order to evaluate the same muscles under the frequency domain, coherence analysis: a correlational method) was used. Additionally, a comparison can be made to determine if the resulting muscle pairs overlap with the muscle pairs …

Kinematic Synthesis Of Planar, Shape-Changing, Rigid Body Mechanisms For Design Profiles With Significant Differences In Arc Length, Shamsul A. Shamsudin, Andrew P. Murray, David H. Myszka, James P. Schmiedeler

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents a kinematic procedure to synthesize planar mechanisms capable of approximating a shape change defined by a general set of curves. These “morphing curves,” referred to as design profiles, differ from each other by a combination of displacement in the plane, shape variation, and notable differences in arc length. Where previous rigid-body shape-change work focused on mechanisms composed of rigid links and revolute joints to approximate curves of roughly equal arc length, this work introduces prismatic joints into the mechanisms in order to produce the different desired arc lengths. A method is presented to iteratively search along the …

Mass Production Of Β-Silicon Carbide Nanofibers By The Novel Method Of Forcespinning, Alfonso Salinas

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Non-oxide Ceramics such as silicon carbide have very unique properties, for example high toughness, thermal stability, wear resistant, and thermal shock resistance these properties make these ceramic fibers excellent for high temperature applications. Here we present the development of Silicon Carbide nanofibers utilizing a Polystyrene/Polycarbomethylsilane solution as the precursor materials. The Forcespinning ® was performed under a controlled nitrogen environment to prevent fiber oxidation. Characterization was conducted using scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and thermogravimetric analysis. The results show successful formation of high yield, long continuous bead-free nanofibers with diameters ranging from 280nm to 2 micron depending on the selected …

Analytical Solutions For A Large-Scale Long-Lived Rotating Layer Of Fluid Heated Underneath, Pouya Jalilian

Masters Theses

In this work, the system of equations for a large- scale long lived rotating layer of fluid with the deformable upper free surface and non-deformable lower free surface heated underneath has been reviewed and derived. The quasi-geostrophic approximation, the beta effect and the method of multi-scale expansions have been employed to and as a result, an equation governing the evolution of large-scale perturbations, has been derived. The effect of each term present in the upper surface deformation equation has been analyzed and the analytical solutions have been obtained by virtue of employing auxiliary Riccati equation method. The soliton solutions obtained …

Constant Voltage Hot-Wire Anemometry For The Boundary Layer Data System, Hon Yee Li

Master's Theses

To continue the development of the Boundary Layer Data System (BLDS), a constant voltage hot-wire anemometer (CVA) is implemented into the BLDS for flight-testing. The hot-wire anemometer was chosen as an alternative to the traditional pressure probe because of the ability to measure both average velocity and fluctuating velocity within the boundary layer. Previous work done on the benchtop has led to the design of miniaturization, flight-capable hardware for the BLDS. The next step in the development of the BLDS – CVA calls for quantifying the accuracy of the boundary layer measurements measured by the CVA system. To do this, …

Large-Displacement Lightweight Armor, Eric C. Clough

Master's Theses

Randomly entangled fibers forming loosely bound nonwoven structures are evaluated for use in lightweight armor applications. These materials sacrifice volumetric efficiency in order to realize a reduction in mass versus traditional armor materials, while maintaining equivalent ballistic performance. The primary material characterized, polyester fiberfill, is shown to have improved ballistic performance over control samples of monolithic polyester as well as 1095 steel sheets. The response of fiberfill is investigated at a variety of strain rates, from quasistatic to ballistic, under compression, tension, and shear deformation to elucidate mechanisms at work during ballistic defeat. Fiberfill’s primary mechanisms during loading are fiber …

Development And Validation Of A Human Hip Joint Finite Element Model For Tissue Stress And Strain Predictions During Gait, Jeffrey D. Pyle

Master's Theses

Articular cartilage degeneration, called osteoarthritis, in the hip joint is a serious condition that affects millions of individuals yearly, with limited clinical solutions available to prevent or slow progression of damage. Additionally, the effects of high-risk factors (e.g. obesity, soft and hard tissue injuries, abnormal joint alignment, amputations) on the progression of osteoarthritis are not fully understood. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to generate a finite element model for predicting osteochondral tissue stress and strain in the human hip joint during gait, with a future goal of using this model in clinically relevant studies aimed at prevention, treatment, …

Investigation Of Compressed Air Energy Storage Efficiency, James W. Keeney

Master's Theses

This study investigates Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) application in the

electrical power and transportation industries. Information concerning current CAES projects is

presented. A thorough thermodynamic analysis of the CAES process is completed; including

theoretical efficiency determination for several variants of the compression and expansion

processes. Industry claimed efficiencies ranging from 26% to 82% are presented and explained.

Isothermal and Isentropic efficiency baselines are developed. Energy density of compressed air

on both a mass and volume basis is compared to other energy storage methods. Best expected

efficiency of a hypothetical CAES system is determined to be 34% using currently achievable …

Enhancing Energy Efficiency In Connected Vehicles Via Access To Traffic Signal Information, Grant Mahler

All Dissertations

This dissertation expounds on algorithms that can deterministically or proba-bilistically predict the future Signal Phase and Timing (SPAT) of a traffic signal by relying on real-time information from numerous vehicles and traffic infrastructure, historical data, and the computational power of a back-end computing cluster. When made available on an open server, predictive information about traffic signals’ states can be extremely valuable in enabling new fuel efficiency and safety functionalities in connected vehicles: Predictive Cruise Control (PCC) can use the predicted timing plan to calculate globally optimal velocity trajectories that reduce idling time at red signals and therefore improve fuel efficiency …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, December 2013, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Primary Resonance Behavior Of Expanded Polymer Cushion Material Under Low-Intensity Harmonic Excitations, Gregory Batt

All Dissertations

The demand to lower costs and reduce the amount of packaging materials utilized in a packaged-product system has placed increased importance on the development of tools to model the behavior of packaging systems. In this dissertation, the free and forced vibration response of a nonlinear, distributed-parameter model of a viscoelastic rod with an applied tip-mass is used to investigate the response of expanded polymer cushion materials to low-intensity harmonic excitations. The rod and tip-mass represent an idealized packaged product system. A nonlinear model is developed from constitutive relations. A classical Maxwell-Weichert model, represented via a Prony series, is used to …

Mode I Fracture Toughness Of Eight-Harness-Satin Carbon Cloth Weaves For Co-Cured And Post-Bonded Laminates, Josh E. Smith

Master's Theses

Mode I interlaminar fracture of 3k 8-Harness-Satin Carbon cloth, with identical fill and weft yarns, pre-impregnated with Newport 307 resin was investigated through the DCB test (ASTM D5528). Crack propagations along both the fill and weft yarns were considered for both post-bonded (co-bonded) and co-cured laminates. A patent-pending delamination insertion method was compared to the standard Teflon film option to assess its applicability to mode I fracture testing. The Modified Beam Theory, Compliance Calibration method, and Modified Compliance Calibration method were used for comparative purposes for these investigations and to evaluate the validity of the proposed Equivalent Stiffness (EQS) method. …

Thermal Analysis Of Carbon Nanofiber Reinforced Isotactic Polypropylene, Anna Alicia Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Isotactic Polypropylene (IPP) is a commonly known thermoplastic that has unique properties include being light weight, high performance, impact strength, tensile strength, elongation, and high temperature properties. The use of vapor grown carbon nanofiber (VGCNF) reinforcements on polypropylene has shown to produce high specific modulus, strength, electrical and thermal properties on specimens. Thermogravimetric (TGA) investigations on the thermal degradation of isotactic polypropylene – vapor grown carbon nanofibers composites in nitrogen were reported. The mass evolution as a function of temperature is a single sigmoid for both polypropylene and polypropylene loaded with VGCNF. The inflection temperature of these sigmoids increases as …

Understanding The Role Of Requirements In Engineering Design By Novices, Shraddha Joshi

All Dissertations

Requirements play a critical role in the design process. The broader impact of this research is to develop a systematic understanding of the current use of requirements with an ultimate goal to develop guidelines and recommendations for more effective use of requirements throughout the design process. Thus, this research begins to answer the question about what is the role of requirements in design process and, specifically, its role in idea generation? The answer to this question is explored in three phases. The first phase is to understand how requirements are currently taught to students. To that end, two surveys were …

Development Of A Coupled Fluid And Colloidall Particle Transport Model, Scott Ripplinger

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A colloidal system usually refers to when very small particles are suspended within a solution. The study of these systems encompasses a variety of cases including bacteria in ground water, blood cells and platelets in blood plasma, and river silt transport. Taking a look at these kinds of systems using computer simulation can provide a great deal of insight into how they work. Most approaches to date do not look at the details of the system, however, and are specific to given system. In this study a program called OpenFOAM is used as a basis to build a computer simulation …

Wind Tunnel Testing And Numerical Simulation On Aerodynamic Performance Of A Three Bladed Savonius Wind Turbine, Khandakar Niaz Morshed, Mosfequr Rahman, Gustavo Molina, Mahbub Ahmed

Mechanical Engineering: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this research work is to investigate experimentally and computationally the feasibility of improving the performance of the vertical-axis Savonius wind turbine. The authors first performed a series of wind tunnel investigations on semi-cylindrical three-bladed Savonius rotor scale models with different overlap ratios and without overlap. These experiments were conducted in front of a low-speed subsonic wind tunnel at different Reynolds numbers. Pressures around the concave and convex surfaces of each blade, as well as the static torque for the rotor models, were measured. Using these experimental data, the authors calculated aerodynamic characteristics such as drag coefficients, static …

Kolsky Bar Experiment For High-Rate Large Deformations Of Polycarbonate, Jason Gerald Vogeler

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

Polycarbonate (PC) is a tough, transparent engineering thermoplastic. Its impact strength and ability undergo large plastic deformations without shatter make PC an ideal protective material for impact-resilient eyewear, aircraft windows and transparent armor. A good understanding of the response of this material to large deformations at high strain rates is critical for its utilization in these applications. To this end, a striker-less Kolsky bar device is employed in this work for the needed material characterization. The apparatus allow impulsive torsion and/or compression loadings with pulse durations sufficiently long for the plastic flow behavior to develop fully. Three new testing techniques …