Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Flexor Casting, Courtney Lehrman

All Undergraduate Projects

Abstract: Strain gauge bases (Flexors) are scarce in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Flexors are used for MET lab classes to collect and analyze data so it is important for there to be more Flexors available. In order to acquire more, resources are available on campus such as the foundry and the machine shop in order to support the manufacturing of more Flexors in-house at a much lower cost. By creating a pattern that can be used numerous times in a foundry, not only will there be an opportunity to make more castings for students to use, there will not be …

Dual-Axis Solar Tracker, Bryan Kennedy

All Undergraduate Projects

Renewable energies, and fuels that are not fossil fuel-based, are one of the prolific topics of debate in modern society. With climate change now becoming a primary focus for scientists and innovators of today, one of the areas for the largest amount of potential and growth is that of the capturing and utilization of Solar Energy. This method involves using a mechanical system to track the progression of the sun as it traverses the sky throughout the day. A dual-axis solar tracker such as the one designed and built for this project, can follow the sun both azimuthally and in …

Mechanical Lift Assist Hoist, Jacob Vanblaricom

All Undergraduate Projects

Pneumatic Gripper for Cast Products

By: Jacob VanBlaricom

Mentors: Craig Johnson ([email protected]), Kurt Gray ([email protected] ),

Ted Bramble ([email protected]) , Travis Lamberte ([email protected] )

The Team was tasked by NorthStar Casteel to create a device that would allow for easy mobility and manipulation of unfinished cast products. The device is needed to increase manufacturing time and decrease worker strain. In order to do this the team designed a custom gripper to match the castings produced at this facility. The gripper was powered by a pneumatic system due to the speed and reliability in this …

Machine Learning In Manufacturing: Review, Synthesis, And Theoretical Framework, Ajit Sharma, Zhibo Zhang, Rahul Rai

Business Administration Faculty Research Publications

There has been a paradigmatic shift in manufacturing as computing has transitioned from the programmable to the cognitive computing era. In this paper we present a theoretical framework for understanding this paradigmatic shift in manufacturing and the fast evolving role of artificial intelligence. Policy, Strategic and Operational implications are discussed. Implications for the future of strategy and operations in manufacturing are also discussed. Future research directions are presented.

Multi-Objective Optimization Of Multi-Loop Control Systems, Yuekun Chen

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Cascade Control systems are composed of inner and outer control loops. Compared to the traditional single feedback controls, the structure of cascade controls is more complex. As a result, the implementation of these control methods is costly because extra sensors are needed to measure the inner process states. On the other side, cascade control algorithms can significantly improve the controlled system performance if they are designed properly. For instance, cascade control strategies can act faster than single feedback methods to prevent undesired disturbances, which can drive the controlled system’s output away from its target value, from spreading through the process. …

Quaternary Hydrides Pd1-Y-Zagycuzhx Embedded Atom Method Potentials For Hydrogen Energy Applications, Chaonan Zhang

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The Pd-H system has attracted extensive attention. Pd can absorb considerable H at room temperature, this ability is reversible, so it is suitable for multiple energy applications. Pd-Ag alloys possess higher H permeability, solubility and narrower miscibility gap with better mechanical properties than pure Pd, but sulfur poisoning remains an issue. Pd-Cu alloys have excellent resistance to sulfur and carbon monoxide poisoning and hydrogen embrittlement, good mechanical properties, and broader temperature working environments over pure Pd, but relatively lower hydrogen permeability and solubility than pure Pd and Pd-Ag alloys. This suggests that alloying Pd with Ag and Cu to create …

Load-Balancing Rendezvous Approach For Mobility-Enabled Adaptive Energy-Efficient Data Collection In Wsns, Jian Zhang, Jian Tang, Zhonghui Wang, Feng Wang, Gang Yu

Faculty and Student Publications

Copyright © 2020 KSII The tradeoff between energy conservation and traffic balancing is a dilemma problem in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). By analyzing the intrinsic relationship between cluster properties and long distance transmission energy consumption, we characterize three node sets of the cluster as a theoretical foundation to enhance high performance of WSNs, and propose optimal solutions by introducing rendezvous and Mobile Elements (MEs) to optimize energy consumption for prolonging the lifetime of WSNs. First, we exploit an approximate method based on the transmission distance from the different node to an ME to select suboptimal Rendezvous Point (RP) on the …

Revisiting Lightweight Encryption For Iot Applications: Error Performance And Throughput In Wireless Fading Channels With And Without Coding, Yazid M. Khattabi, Mustafa M. Matalgah, Mohammed M. Olama

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2013 IEEE. Employing heavy conventional encryption algorithms in communications suffers from added overhead and processing time delay; and in wireless communications, in particular, suffers from severe performance deterioration (avalanche effect) due to fading. Consequently, a tremendous reduction in data throughput and increase in complexity and time delay may occur especially when information traverse resource-limited devices as in Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. To overcome these drawbacks, efficient lightweight encryption algorithms have been recently proposed in literature. One of those, that is of particular interest, requires using conventional encryption only for the first block of data in a given frame being transmitted. …

Cooperative Relay Selection For Load Balancing With Mobility In Hierarchical Wsns: A Multi-Armed Bandit Approach, Jian Zhang, Jian Tang, Feng Wang

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2013 IEEE. Energy efficiency is the major concern in hierarchical wireless sensor networks(WSNs), where the major energy consumption originates from radios for communication. Due to notable energy expenditure of long-range transmission for cluster members and data aggregation for Cluster Head (CH), saving and balancing energy consumption is a tricky challenge in WSNs. In this paper, we design a CH selection mechanism with a mobile sink (MS) while proposing relay selection algorithms with multi-user multi-armed bandit (UM-MAB) to solve the problem of energy efficiency. According to the definition of node density and residual energy, we propose a conception referred to …

Tangle-Free Exploration With A Tethered Mobile Robot, Danylo Shapovalov, Guilherme Pereira

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Exploration and remote sensing with mobile robots is a well known field of research, but current solutions cannot be directly applied for tethered robots. In some applications, tethers may be very important to provide power or allow communication with the robot. This paper presents an exploration algorithm that guarantees complete exploration of arbitrary environments within the length constraint of the tether, while keeping the tether tangle-free at all times. While we also propose a generalized algorithm that can be used with several exploration strategies, our implementation uses a modified frontier-based exploration approach, where the robot chooses its next goal in …

A Mobile Learning Community In A Living Learning Community: Perceived Impact On Digital Fluency And Communication, Devshikha Bose, Krishna Pakala, Lana Grover

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Though mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and tablet computers have an immense potential for improving student learning, there is little empirical research which reports ways in which students actually use these technologies for learning, especially in fields like Engineering. Based on a social-constructivist approach to learning, the purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate student perceptions regarding changes in mobile device based digital fluency and communication, after participation in a Living Learning Community (LLC) based Mobile Learning Community. This study contributes to existing literature in the field in that it reports student perceptions of how mobile devices can …

Thermal Modeling Of Coordinated Multi-Beam Additive Manufacturing, Rachel Elizabeth Evans

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

In additive manufacturing (AM), it is necessary to know the influence of processing parameters in order to have better control over the microstructure and mechanical performance of the part. Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is a metal AM process in which thin layers of powdered material are selectively melted to create a three-dimensional structure. This manufacturing process is beneficial for many reasons; however, it is limited by the thermal solidification conditions achievable in the available processing parameter ranges for single-beam processing methods. Therefore, this work investigates the effect of multiple, coordinated heat sources, which are used to strategically modify the …

Composite Guitar, Ryn Rollins

All Undergraduate Projects

Traditional wood-bodied products such as boats, hockey sticks, and guitars can be easily chipped or cracked if not properly taken care of. The wood can absorb moisture and deteriorate over time. If that wood is replaced with composite materials, those products can become stronger, more lightweight, and resistant to temperature and corrosion. Two of the most popular composite materials are carbon fiber and fiberglass. Because these composite materials have such a high strength, the core of a guitar body can also be replaced with a lighter material such as Styrofoam which makes for a lighter and more durable guitar. The …

Rc Mini Baja Car - Suspension And Chassis, Collin Mckenzie

All Undergraduate Projects

Two students have developed a unique design of the RC Baja Car to optimize functionality and performance. A Baja car is a remote controlled 1/10 scale car that is used for recreation or competition, usually meant for competing in the ASME Baja car competition versus various schools. The competition focuses on the best time achieved in different courses that utilize speed, turns, and jumps. The objective for the project was to create a unique suspension from previous individual’s projects by creating a four-link suspension in which allows more travel in the suspension of the car and maintains functionality with the …

H.F. Hauff Portable Wind Fan Stabilizer, Tyler Hoffman

All Undergraduate Projects

Agricultural areas with cold weather in winter and early spring face significant risk of damage to crops due to freezing. To combat this issue, several farms use fans to keep goods from freezing. For some orchards and vineyards, the use of large-scale fans is not cost effective nor pragmatic. H.F. Hauff, a farming equipment company based out of Yakima, Washington, has developed a mobile, self-contained fan that operates on a seven-by-twelve-foot trailer. As a function of environment, the trailer sometimes operates on uneven or unlevel terrain. There arises a need for an improved outrigger system to keep the trailer stabilized. …

Concrete Beam Design: Pouring The Foundation To Engineering In T&E Classrooms, Andrew J. Hughes, Chris Merrill

Educational Leadership & Technology Faculty Publications

Ask a middle or high school student if they could design a concrete beam that weighs only 20 pounds and is 36” long but must hold 600 pounds without failing. What is the student likely to say? What if the student was told that, with some optimized decision making based on relatively straightforward mathematics, their beam could hold 2400 pounds or more? The focus of this article is not on concrete beam design, it is rather an introduction to engineering principles in beam design using a lab activity. The concepts and skills learned in this article will lead students into …

Analyzing Concrete Beam Design: Verifying Predictions In T&Ee Classrooms, Andrew J. Hughes, Chris Merrill

Educational Leadership & Technology Faculty Publications

Design is often accepted as a fundamental aspect of engineering (Dym, et al., 2005). The design process is frequently portrayed as a set of steps. However, the design process is more complex than just a set of steps in a relatively fixed process. The complex nature of design, design thinking, questioning, and decision-making is exactly what technology and engineering classrooms are well suited to address. When addressing the question—“Why is technology and engineering education (T&EE) so important?”—the authors believe T&EE’s importance relates to our discipline’s ability to solve complex problems by balancing theory and practice in engaging hands-on learning scenarios …

Mechanical And Aerospace Engineering, 2019-2020, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering News

• Letter from the Chair
• The MAE Staff
• Dr. Zachary Asher
• Alumni Excellence Academy Inductees
• From Sunway University to Success in America
• Student Experience at the Oshkosh Airventure
• Parker-Hannifin Donates New Hydraulic Trainers
• Electric Ducted Fan Lab for the Aircraft Propulsion Course
• MAE Faculty

Adjustable Short Throw Shifter (Asts), Joshua Franklin

All Undergraduate Projects

Every manual transmission vehicle has a shift lever for changing gears. The problem is that the shifting linkage is setup up for one kind of driving. Numerous vehicles have multiple settings for the suspension to adapt to varying driving scenarios (i.e. cruising, sport, track). No vehicle currently has an adjustable short throw shifter (ASTS) that can accommodate drag racing, drifting, sports car racing, rallying, off-roading, or casual driving. The design of the ASTS solves this problem by moving the central axis of rotation of the shifter up two inches, permitting the adjustment of the shifting throw between 20 and 40%. …

Speed Bump Power Generator, Osamah Abulghaith

All Undergraduate Projects

Pollution is one of the major issues in the country. Most of the power generation systems contribute some percentage in pollution. Therefore, coming up with a solution that has little or no environmental impacts is the best way. One of the significant goals in the research community is getting the energy generating systems that are non-pollutant. The paper is a paper gives a step by step procedure of constructing a speed bump power generator using available resources.

The analysis was done to design the device and help choose and manufacturing the parts. For instance, spring constant formula was used in …

A Preconditioned Lattice Boltzmann Flux Solver For Steady Flows On Unstructured Hexahedral Grids, Brendan Walsh, Fergal Boyle

Articles

The lattice Boltzmann flux solver (LBFS), first introduced by Shu et al. (2014) on structured meshes, allows fluid flow problems to be solved on unstructured meshes discretised by the finite volume method. The solver calculates the macroscopic fluxes at the cell interfaces from a local reconstruction of the lattice Boltzmann solution. In this paper the LBFS is extended to three-dimensional unstructured hexahedral meshes and a preconditioned lattice Boltzmann flux solver (PLBFS) is presented. The PLBFS involves applying the preconditioning technique proposed by Guo (2004) to the LBFS and is achieved by modifying the equilibrium distribution function used to calculate the …

An Experimental Study To Measure The Concentration Of Nanofluids By Using Refractive Index, Kwan Ng, Man Hei Chau

Staff Publications

In a decade, nanofluids are a new kind of fluid that has rapid development and wide application in various fields. Especially, nanofluids as a heat transfer fluids in different industrial instead of the traditional heat transfer fluids such as water, oil, and ethylene glycol…etc. The nanofluids have consisted the nano-size metal or metal oxide pArticles with base fluids, the nanoparticles have a superior thermo property to enhance the heat transfer performance of based fluids. Concentration is an important factor that can be influenced by most of the thermal properties of nanofluids. In present, the concentration of nanofluids is predetermined, the …

Timcc: On Data Freshness In Privacy-Preserving Incentive Mechanism Design For Continuous Crowdsensing Using Reverse Auction, Xiaoqiang Ma, Weiwei Deng, Feng Wang, Menglan Hu, Fei Chen, Mohammad Mehedi Hassan

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2013 IEEE. As an emerging paradigm that leverages the wisdom and efforts of the crowd, mobile crowdsensing has shown its great potential to collect distributed data. The crowd may incur such costs and risks as energy consumption, memory consumption, and privacy leakage when performing various tasks, so they may not be willing to participate in crowdsensing tasks unless they are well-paid. Hence, a proper privacy-preserving incentive mechanism is of great significance to motivate users to join, which has attracted a lot of research efforts. Most of the existing works regard tasks as one-shot tasks, which may not work very …

The Impact Of Scaffolded Writing Instruction On Followup Course Assignments, Daniel Kawano

Faculty Publications - Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Upgrading The Capstone Projects: The Engineering Clinic Model, Smitesh Bakrania, Ratneshwar Jha

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

Capstone engineering design projects are ideal for broad application of engineering concepts on open-ended research and design problems. These projects allow students to reinforce their skills and extend their expertise into specialized areas of interest. Often, the capstone projects serve as both test grounds and launch pads for students’ engineering careers. Within the engineering curriculum, these projects typically span the final year of an engineering program and entail a single project within a single disciplinary area. While their significance to the educational experience is unequivocal, the benefits of a capstone project can be expanded to further reflect real-world experiences. Over …

A Simulation For Exploring Ethical Situations That Arise From Conflicting Product Goals, Allen White

Faculty Publications - Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Scaffolded Writing Instruction On Followup Course Assignments, Daniel Kawano

Faculty Publications - Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Exact Solutions To The Three-Dimensional Navier-Stokes Equations Using The Extended Beltrami Method, Nolan J. Dyck, Anthony G. Straatman

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Publications

No abstract provided.

Fuzzy Controller Algorithm For Automated Hvac Control, M. Chae, K. Kang, D. Koo, S. Oh, Jae Youl Chun

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This research presents the design framework of the artificial intelligent algorithm for an automated building management system. The AI system uses wireless sensor data or IoT (Internet of Things) and user's feedback together. The wireless sensors collect data such as temperature (indoor and outdoor), humidity, light, user occupancy of the facility, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) which is known as the source of the Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) or New Building Syndrome because VOC are often found in new buildings or old buildings with new interior improvement and they can be controlled and reduced by appropriate ventilation efforts. The collected …

Achieving Practical Functional Electrical Stimulation-Driven Reaching Motions In An Individual With Tetraplegia, Derek Nathaniel Wolf

ETD Archive

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a promising technique for restoring the ability to complete reaching motions to individuals with tetraplegia due to a spinal cord injury (SCI). FES has proven to be a successful technique for controlling many functional tasks such as grasping, standing, and even limited walking. However, translating these successes to reaching motions has proven difficult due to the complexity of the arm and the goaldirected nature of reaching motions. The state-of-the-art systems either use robots to assist the FES-driven reaching motions or control the arm of healthy subjects to complete planar motions. These controllers do not directly …