Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Benchtop Centrifuge For Materials Science, Ryan Schulz, Thomas Valentine, Abhay Gupta

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The Benchtop Centrifuge was designed to serve for research purposes within theMechanical Engineering Department at Santa Clara University. The prototype has been completely assembled and is functioning to the desired specifications of applying up to 1000 g’s of force for over 4 hours. The current uses are anticipated for separation of particles within materials for material processing and testing. The overall systemdesign has been adapted froma legacy project within the University. Various tests were conducted in order to ensure safety and usability of the system. Through Abaqus analysis and drop-test experiments, it was found enclosure itself can withstand an impact …

Enhanced Visible Light Photocatalytic Remediation Of Organics In Water Using Zinc Oxide And Titanium Oxide Nanostructures, Srikanth Gunti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The techniques mostly used to decontaminate air as well as water pollutants have drawbacks in terms of higher costs, require secondary treatment, and some methods are very slow. So, emphasis has been given to water though the use of photocatalysts, which break organic pollutants to water and carbon dioxide and leave no trace of by-products at the end. Photocatalytic remediation aligns with the waste and wastewater industries’ zero waste schemes with lower cost, eco-friendly and sustainable treatment technology. The commonly used photocatalysts such as titanium oxide (TiO₂), zinc oxide (ZnO), tungsten oxide (WO₃) have band gap …

Wear-Resistant Extrusion Auger For The Production Of Charcoal Briquettes From Agricultural Waste, Maureen O’Neill, Aaron Wagner

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Ugandan social enterprise AEST makes and sells agricultural waste charcoal briquettes. The extrusion auger used wore down quickly, hampering production. The team worked to find a better material or heattreatment process to improve the auger's lifetime. The team built a custom pin-on-disk testing apparatus and used it along with optical microscopy to analyze the wear mechanism. The team then heat-treated and tested additional samples to find the best treatment. The team suggested improving AEST’s current case hardening process by increasing the case depth to 0.04 in (0.1016 cm) and using oil quenching.

Effects Of Passive And Active Training Paradigms On Bone And Muscle Recovery After Spinal Cord Injury, Brittany Lynn King

Theses and Dissertations

The effects spinal cord injury (SCI) has have been studied in both human and animal models. Specifically in incomplete SCI, the bone degradation and muscle atrophy seen in the lower limbs has been documented, along with the effects of different training paradigms on bone and muscle loss. This study implemented a clinically relevant animal model of a moderate spinal contusion injury at the T9--T10 level, along with active body weight supported treadmill training (BWSTT) and passive bike training, to compare the effects such training methods have on the bone microstructure properties and muscle masses in the lower limbs of rats. …

Poly Pelletizer: Recycled Pet Pellets From Water Bottles, Logan Costa-Smith, Ian Maltzer, James Martino

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Plastic water bottles comprise a large amount of waste worldwide. The goal of the Poly Pelletizer project is to create a system that will turn water bottles into polyethylene terephthalate (PET) pellets compatible with extruders to produce 3-D printer lament, along with other recycling applications.The system promotes a sustainable solution to plastic pollution by giving manufactures, particularly in developing nations, the means to produce their own bulk materials using waste plastic. Shrinking industrial recycling processes to a workbench scale gives individuals the ability to convert excess bottles into seemingly limitless products. The system works by using a dual heating and …

Beta: Bioprinting Engineering Technology For Academia, Max Abrams, Jeffrey Barone, Cynthia Le, Jacob Ososke, Franz Plum, Emily Takimoto, Josie Warren

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Higher STEM education is a field of growing potential, but too many middle school and high school students are not testing proficiently in STEM subjects. The BETA team worked to improve biology classroom engagement through the development of technologies for high school biology experiments. The BETA project team expanded functionality of an existing product line to allow for better student and teacher user experience and the execution of more interesting experiments. The BETA project’s first goal was to create a modular incubating Box for the high school classroom. This Box, called the BETA Box was designed with a variety of …

Characterizing The Viscoelastic Behavior Of Pdms/Pdps Copolymers, Mark E. Small

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

Viscoelasticity is the property of materials that exhibits both viscous and elastic characteristics when undergoing deformation. In polymeric materials, the mechani- cal behavior is dominated by this viscoelastic phenomenon. Creating computational models for these materials can be quite complicated due to their frequency depen- dent and temperature dependent material properties. The research presented in this paper will use state of the art methods to fully develop a material model for a filled polydimethylsiloxane-polydiphenynlsiloxane (PDMS/PDPS) copolymer foam that has yet to be characterized. Mechanical properties of PDMS/PDPS copoly- mers are currently being studied to assess engineering performance, and to provide accurate …

Front Dynamics Of Elliptical Gravity Currents On A Uniform Slope, S. J. Zhu, ‪Nadim Zgheib, S. Balachandar, A. Ooi

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

In the present investigation, we report data from direct numerical simulations of elliptical, finite release, Boussinesq gravity currents propagating down a uniform slope. The study comprises a series of simulations of elliptical gravity currents on a range of slope angles. The shape parameters are varied to study the effects of the initial cross-sectional aspect ratio (Λ0) and mean height to lock radius ratio (Γ) on the dynamics of the gravity current. It is found that the long-time development of the current spatial mass distribution is influenced by its initial shape at smaller slope angles (θ=5∘ and 10∘) whereas the long-time …

Optimal Charging Scheduler For Electric Vehicles On The Florida Turnpike, Florida Solar Energy Center, Zhihua Qu

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This project developed a methodology to simulate and analyze roadway traffic patterns and expected penetration and timing of electric vehicles (EVs) with application directed toward the requirements for electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) siting and purchasing/leasing at turnpike plazas. The project also developed a wireless-communication-based driver-assistance application that would optimize the location and timing of charging for individual drivers as well as efficiency of the overall charging network. The first steps of the project were to develop the systematic methodology for analyzing expected penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) and their impacts on the overall transportation infrastructure. An analytical model consisting …

Variable Drive Vehicle, Christopher Clark, Michael D'Arrigo, Graham Mcclone, Joseph Sahyoun

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The versatility of current rovers and exploratory vehicles is limited by a single drive system. The Variable Drive Vehicle (VDV) employs a actuated systemcapable of switching between wheeled and tracked drive modes. This allows the vehicle to travel quickly and efficiently over smooth terrain and to traverse more arduous terrain by switching between these two systems. The small scale prototype built over the course of this project is equipped with two modular wheel driven track units to demonstrate the viability of the system. Electric linear actuators and servo motors allow for simple control and a smooth transition between each drive …

Thermophysical Properties Of Thin Fibers Via Photothermal Quantum Dot Fluorescence Spectral Shape-Based Thermometry, Troy Munro, Liwang Liu, Heng Ban, Christ Glorieux

Faculty Publications

To improve predictions of composite behavior under thermal loads, there is a need to measure the axial thermophysical properties of thin fibers. Current methods to accomplish this have prohibitively long lead times due to extensive sample preparation. This work details the use of quantum dots thermomarkers to measure the surface temperature of thin fibers in a non-contact manner and determine the fibers’ thermal diffusivity. Neural networks are trained on extracting the temperature of a sample from fluorescence spectra in calibrated, steady-state conditions, based on different spectral features such as peak intensity and peak wavelength. The trained neural networks are then …

Forge 2.0 Clean Burning Cook Stove, William Gebb, Matthew Lee, Thai Ha Sloan, Emily Gray-Gribble

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Team Forge 2.0 is a team of mechanical engineers that has designed, modified, and manufactured a cook stove that creates a clean burn in order to help relieve respiratory disease and harmful environmental impacts resulting from the combustion of biomass in developing nations. The stove is developed specifically for developing communities in Nicaragua that still use traditional cooking methods which contribute to premature deaths due to respiratory illness. The designed product is a cylindrical cooking device that has a unique air flow system which optimizes the gasification process. Gasification is the process in which gas released from the primary combustion …

Scu Cube, Matt Condino, Andrew Drape, Evan Eberhardt, Cooper Mcdonnell, Brayton Mcknight, Isaac Mcquillen, James Olwell, Laura Tschudy

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Traditional forms of communication such as landlines and cell phones are unreliable during disaster scenarios. It is difficult to coordinate relief efforts in the aftermath of a disaster due to the unavailability of reliable communication methods. The SCUCube is a 3U CubeSat designed to aid disaster relief communications. The satellite has an amateur radio primary payload that can send and receive standardized data packets with compatible radios, and also has an experimental attitude control system secondary payload. The semi-passive attitude control system uses a gravity gradient boom and a reaction wheel to stabilize the orientation of the satellite. In addition, …

A Review Of Injectable And Implantable Biomaterials For Treatment And Repair Of Soft Tissues In Wound Healing, Shih-Feng Chou, Simi Gunaseelan, Mhd Hussam Hijazi Kiellani, Venkata Vamsi Krishna Thottempudi, Pierre Neuenschwander, Huarong Nie

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The two major topics concerning the development of nanomedicine are drug delivery and tissue engineering.With the advance in nanotechnology, scientists and engineers now have the ability to fabricate functional drug carriers and/or biomaterials that deliver and release drugs locally as well as promote tissue regeneration. In this short review, we address the use of nanotechnology in the fabrication of biomaterials (i.e., nanoparticles and nanofibers) and their therapeutic function in wound healing as dressing materials. Furthermore, we discuss the use of surface nanofeatures to regulate cell adhesion, migration, proliferation, and differentiation, which is a crucial step in wound healing associated with …

Object Manipulation Using A Multirobot Cluster With Force Sensing, Matthew H. Chin

Mechanical Engineering Master's Theses

This research explored object manipulation using multiple robots by developing a control system utilizing force sensing. Multirobot solutions provide advantages of redundancy, greater coverage, fault-tolerance, distributed sensing and actuation, and reconfigurability. In object manipulation, a variety of solutions have been explored with different robot types and numbers, control strategies, sensors, etc. This research involved the integration of force sensing with a centralized position control method of two robots (cluster control) and building it into an object level controller. This controller commands the robots to push the object based on the measured interaction forces between them while maintaining proper formation with …

Evaluation Of Concrete Constitutive Models For Impact Simulations, Guillermo A. Mata

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

The research documented in this thesis deals with computational analysis of reinforced concrete impacted by both hollow and solid missiles as a continuing effort on the work conducted by the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) and Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). The analysis focuses on comparing two similar material models and their ability to capture the mechanistic response of a reinforced concrete slab subjected to impact loads. The analysis was performed using the Sandia National Laboratories computing software SIERRA Solid Mechanics to run the finite element model. The two constitutive models studied were the Holmquist-Johnson-Cook and Johnson-Holmquist 2 …

Balancing Of Production Line In A Bearing Industry To Improve Productivity, Sudharsan Sridhar, Balthilak Anandaraj, Santhosh B

The Hilltop Review

Line balancing addresses the issues of balancing production or assembly line and it generally minimizes the idle time for all the events and the combinations of workstations. Factors such as lack of materials, design changes in the product, labor position may also be needed for line balancing. We approached the industry and proposed a heuristic solution solving in two different platforms, by rearranging the existing tasks over the work stations, so that the idle time of the machines are reduced to minimum and the other is by using Timer Pro software where grouping of similar kind of activities are to …

Measurement And Analysis Of The Physical And Climatic Distribution Environment For Air Package Shipment, David Guadagnini

Master's Theses

The modern air parcel distribution industry has significantly grown to become one of the most commonly employed methods to quickly transport goods throughout the world. Although it comes with many benefits, including higher speed, greater reliability, and tighter security, the multimodal transport system within it can expose packages to a wide variety of climatic and physical distribution hazards. In a single route of transportation, packages could be included in different types of small delivery vans, large commercial semi trucks, cargo dollies, feeder aircraft, and high altitude commercial jetliners. The varying hazard level presented during distribution could directly weaken the packaging …

Multi-Criteria Flow-Shop Scheduling Optimization, Raviteja Arikati

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

A flow-shop is a type of manufacturing job shop where similar jobs follow a similar, linear sequence through the shop. Every day, flow-shops receive several different orders and it is up to the scheduler to plan the daily schedule. This schedule should be designed to prevent bottlenecks in the shop, to have on-time delivery of products, and satisfy several other requirements. Often, schedulers perform subjective scheduling and utilize simple heuristics or just intuition to schedule the jobs. With computer-based scheduling, schedulers can now create schedules and determine quantitatively what sorts of schedules work best. Currently, much of the computer-based schedules …

Improved Hot Water Code Calculation, Florida Solar Energy Center, Jeffrey Sonne

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The purpose of this report is to identify hot water waste sources, characterize the implications of climatic differences on hot water use and characterize the energy impacts of hot water recirculation systems and controls with respect to energy consumption in Florida homes, and recommend Florida-specific methods that can be employed in the Florida Energy Code for residential hot water use and energy consumption calculations.

Cannons To Spark Thermal-Fluid Canons, Francis M. Haas, Nicholas W. Dow, Thomas L. Merrill, Smitesh Bakrania

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

Hands-on projects are launch pads for sparking student interest. Specifically, design-build-test (DBT) projects can be effective tools for boosting students’ confidence in their ability to apply theoretical knowledge to practical engineering. Recognizing the need for relating the theoretical aspects of thermodynamics to its application, an air cannon design-build-test project was envisioned and implemented.

Air cannons can be simple and inexpensive to construct, while offering a robust platform to explore thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics concepts. At the same time, the ability to launch projectiles from the cannons carries an obvious appeal for many students. An air cannon design project …

Yeager Multi-Function Tool Ql+, Osiel Flores-Hernandez, Carter Wilson, David Wright, Mitchell Jackson

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

No abstract provided.

Polar Coordinate Farm Bot Final Project Report, John Brown, Kasenia Colombo, Lucas Salem, Ning Jeng, Rory Stothers, Sam Lees

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

FarmBot Inc. is a local startup that is advancing precision agriculture through automation and open source technology. The original FarmBot model, FarmBot Genesis, operates over a rectangular area of 3 x 1.5 meters. It plants, waters, weeds and grows produce autonomously using CNC technology. Our project sponsor and inventor of FarmBot, Rory Aronson, tasked our team with developing and testing a polar coordinate farmbot capable of performing on par with the Cartesian farmbot in growing a circular vegetable garden in a user’s backyard. A successful project was defined by meeting specific customer requirements and engineering specifications predetermined and discussed with …

Design Of An Automated Welding Process For Synergy Mfg., Parsa Bakhtiari

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This senior project involves a partnership with a local off-road parts manufacturer called Synergy Mfg. Synergy is experiencing a rapid increase in demand that is difficult to meet with their current processes. Because of this issue, Synergy is exploring automation in order to decrease their cycle times and increase their production output. More specifically, this report concentrates on automating a manual welding process that has a lengthy cycle time which causes Synergy’s difficulties with meeting demand. Due to time constraints, this project focused on the automation of a welding process for only one part that Synergy produces. This part contains …

Predictive Analytics In Forecasting, Matthew Suarez

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Predicting future demand can be of tremendous help to businesses in scheduling and allocating appropriate amounts of material and labor. The more accurate these predictions are, the more the business will save money by matching supply with demand as closely as possible. The approach for an accurate forecast, and the goal of this project, involves using data analytics techniques on past historical sales data. Working with Campus Dining, a year's worth of their daily sales data will be analyzed and ultimately used for the end result of both an accurate forecasting technique and a way to display the results in …

Design Of A Finger Lime Loading System, Joel Jameson Hitchen

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Automation for post harvest processing of finger limes is required to meet demand for the new citrus fruit being introduced to United States of America food and agriculture market. As labor wages rise, and demand climbs for finger lime product a creative solution is needed to eliminate human labor and reduce the manual input needed to process finger limes. Building on an already successful processing tool, a semi-­automated loading system was designed and implemented to overcome the problem.

Strategic Level Proton Therapy Patient Admission Planning: A Markov Decision Process Modeling Approach, Shengfan Zhang, Ridvan Gedik, Chase Rainwater

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

A relatively new consideration in proton therapy planning is the requirement that the mix of patients treated from different categories satisfy desired mix percentages. Deviations from these percentages and their impacts on operational capabilities are of particular interest to healthcare planners. In this study, we investigate intelligent ways of admitting patients to a proton therapy facility that maximize the total expected number of treatment sessions (fractions) delivered to patients in a planning period with stochastic patient arrivals and penalize the deviation from the patient mix restrictions. We propose a Markov Decision Process (MDP) model that provides very useful insights in …

Effect Of Composition And Build Direction On Additively Manufactured Hastelloy X Alloys, Justin A. Spitzer, Jeffrey T. Schloetter, Sarah Zerga

Materials Engineering

Microcracking has caused premature failure and reduction in properties in additively manufactured (AM) Hastelloy X. The purpose of this research is to meet or exceed the mechanical properties of wrought Hastelloy X by modifying the composition and build direction of Hastelloy X manufactured using Direct Metal Deposition (DMD). Tensile testing, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and metallography were performed on the samples. ANOVA was used to analyze the dependence that the properties had on build direction and composition. The nominal composition wrought samples had a yield strength of 310.1 MPa and a 60.79% Elongation. Alloy P60-X18 in a horizontal build had …

Remote Cable Gantry, Allen L. Bailey

Electrical Engineering

The Remote Cable Gantry is a robotic system that was initially intended to aid in the art of aerial videography. It was designed to enable novice and expert users alike to capture both video footage and audio from perspectives unachievable by current methods. This system uses a series of cables to control the position of a camera gimbal in a defined 3D space and, as a self-contained unit, is portable and easy to use. The Remote Cable Gantry offers a quiet, intuitive, and safe alternative to existing technology, which has been limiting the market and potential of aerial photography and …

Jfs Turbine Engine For Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering Department, Dorian Capps, Zoe Kai Tuggle

Mechanical Engineering

This project concerns the development of a gas turbine engine laboratory activity for use in one of Cal Poly’s technical elective courses in the Mechanical Engineering Department, ME 444: Combustion Engine Design. The class is taught by Dr. Patrick Lemieux, who is also in charge of the on-campus engines lab where the turbine engine will be installed. The engine itself is a JFS-100-13A turboshaft engine that will be coupled to an electric dynamometer inside of the dyno test cell. Students taking the ME 444 class, likely starting in Winter Quarter of 2018, will be able to perform hands-on experiments using …