Forest Sign Maker, Victor Espinosa Iii, Kevin Ly, Lisa Yip

Mechanical Engineering

Executive Summary:

The Inyo National Forest is arguably one of the most beautiful locations in California, containing natural masterpieces such as Mount Whitney and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Despite its magnificence, the Inyo National Forest can be a treacherous region. The Friends of the Inyo take pride in being able to facilitate the viewing experience for all outdoorsmen by maintaining the mountain trails, which includes providing adequate trail signage.

Unfortunately, there is a fundamental issue with the recent state of trail signage in the Inyo National Forest: the rate at which signs are being vandalized or naturally destroyed is …

Freedom Ski, Toby A. Goldsteinholm, Ashley Scharff, Justin Satnick, Markus Rutner

Mechanical Engineering

The current availability of water skis for people who are paraplegic or quadriplegic is very limited. The aim of our project is to design a system that improves upon the current models of specialized water skis. Our intent is to create a waterski system that is structurally stable and handles responsively, in order to ensure that anyone is capable of effectively using our system to waterski.

The main client of our project is Quality of Life Plus, an organization that aims to aid veterans of the armed forces who have physical disabilities to still enjoy a good quality of life. …

Mechanical Prosthetic Hand For Navy Seal, Ryan Burke, Michael Friedman, Jose Lemus, Heather Martin

Mechanical Engineering

Quality of Life Plus has been improving the lives of many wounded servicemen and first responders around the country. Its mission is to foster and generate innovations to aid and improve the quality of life for those injured in the line of duty. This project is the fifth iteration of designing a prosthetic hand for an active duty Navy SEAL. The first iterations have been myoelectric systems where sensors are attached to the user’s muscles to actuate the prosthetic. However, the most recent has been a purely mechanical system, and was shoulder actuated. The design was more robust, it was …

Jonathan’S Natural Juices Mechanical Juice Dispenser, Andrew Meyer, Jesus Gutierrez, Danielle Lauinger

Mechanical Engineering

Team AJD was tasked with trying to create a juice dispenser that did not utilize pumps, but rather explore the venturi effect to see if it could be a suitable substitute. The venturi effect is when a fluid in a pipe goes through a gradual reduction in diameter in a pipe to increase the velocity and lower the pressure of a fluid. Utilizing this principle the team constructed a testing device to be able to run tests and verify the theory. The team was able to verify that the venturi effect was able to make juice at the correct mix …

Team Solar Sip, Patrick Fillingham, Wesley Goodson, Kenneth Li

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Smart Water Meter, Jeff Hufford, Eric Adler, Garrett Hall

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Solar Decathlon 2015, Solar Cal Poly; Solar Cal Poly Project Engineers, Cristina Paquin, Julien Blarel, Sanchit Joshi

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Cable Drag Test, Alex Powers, Brandon Sadiarin, George Rodriguez Iv, Torey Kruisheer

Mechanical Engineering

The Smooth Shifters is a team composed of Alex Powers, Brandon Roy Sadiarin, George Rodriguez, and Torey Kruisheer. We are four senior mechanical engineering students at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, California that are working on a senior design project for Specialized Bicycle Components, Inc. located in Morgan Hill, California. We will be under the advisement of Professor Sarah T. Harding of the mechanical engineering department at Cal Poly.

Specialized, one of today’s leading bicycle companies, is in need of a test setup that measures brake and shifter cable drag. High performance cyclists using time …

Aerodynamic Design And Structural Analysis Procedure For Small Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbine Rotor Blade, Dylan R. Perry

Master's Theses

This project accomplished two correlated goals of designing a new rotor blade to be used with the Cal Poly Wind Power Research Center, as well as defining the methodology required for the aerodynamic analysis of an optimized blade, the procedure required for generation of an accurate CAD model for the new blade geometry, and structural integrity verification procedure for the new blade via finite element analysis under several operating scenarios. The new rotor blades were designed to perform at peak efficiency at a much lower wind speed than the current CPWPRC rotor blades and incorporated a FEA verification process which …

A Finite Element Analysis Of Tibial Stem Geometry For Total Knee Replacements, Aaron Isidro Bautista

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of tibial stem geometry on stress shielding of the tibia for patients with a total knee replacement. Finite element analysis was used to study different tibial stem geometry types, as well as a vast array of different geometric sizes. Both a peg and stem type geometry were analyzed and compared in order to determine what type geometry causes the least amount of stress shielding. A static loading condition with a dynamic loading factor of three was used for the system and the stress responses were analyzed at regions of interest …

Mathematical Model Validation Of A Center Of Gravity Measuring Platform Using Experimental Tests And Fea, Michael Lashore

Master's Theses

This thesis sets out to derive an analytical model for a center of gravity (CG) measuring platform and examines its validity through experimental testing and Finite Element Modeling. The method uses a two-stage platform tilting process to first locate the planar CG coordinates and then find the third CG coordinate normal to the platform. An uncertainty model of the measuring platform was also developed, both CG and uncertainty models were implemented in the form of a MATLAB code. A load cell sizing task was also added to the code to assist the Integration Engineers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in selecting …

Evaluation Of Design Tools For The Micro-Ram Air Turbine, Victor Fidel Villa

Master's Theses

The development and evaluation of the design of a Micro-Ram Air Turbine (µRAT), a device being developed to provide power for an autonomous boundary layer measurement system, has been undertaken. The design tools consist of a rotor model and a generator model. The primary focus was on developing and evaluating the generator model for the prediction of generator brake power and output electrical power with and without rectification as a function of shaft speed and electrical load, with only basic manufacturer specifications given as inputs. A series of motored generator evaluation test were conducted at speeds ranging from 9,000 to …

Veloelectric: Creating A Device That Harvests Energy From Bicycles, Austin Hall, Daniel Stohr, Tj Fox

Mechanical Engineering

Long distance mountain bikers, bike-packers, and many bikers in developing countries rely on electrical devices for safety and communication. These specific groups of people operate in areas with little to no electricity, and often times have no power to sustain their devices. The purpose of this Cal Poly senior project, VeloElectric, was to design, build, and test a kinetic energy harvester for bicycles that can be used to charge common mobile devices via USB. This senior project team created a device that attaches directly to a bicycle and uses vibrations to generate energy, which in turn powers a variety of …

Ir Barcode Reader, Isaac Lambing, Justin Gronet, Tony Ly, Mark Berry

Mechanical Engineering

BrandWatch Technologies is a company based in Portland, Oregon that seek to detect counterfeit products in the supply chain. BrandWatch has created a taggant material, a physical marker, that can be printed over barcodes or added to the ink used to print the barcodes themselves. This material, while invisible to the naked eye, is detectable using technology that they have developed.

BrandWatch enlisted the help of a four man team of Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering students to combine this technology with that of a barcode scanner. The device, capable of scanning barcodes, detecting the presence of the taggant material, and …

Cal Poly Dining: The Avenue Redesign, Eric Calbonero, Derek Nollsch, Casey Reilly

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Executive Summary

Campus Dining is planning to close VG’s Cafe during the 2015-2016 school year; as a result, the remaining restaurants on campus need to accommodate the additional student demand. The student team consisting of Eric Calbonero, Derek Nollsch, and Casey Reilly met with Campus Dining’s Director of Operations, Greg Yeo, about this issue—he directed the team toward a redesign of The Avenue Food Court. To redesign The Avenue, the project team focused on several key deliverables as follows:

• Study current customer trends in The Avenue

• Develop a proposed facilities layout and design

• Perform a capacity analysis of The Avenue …

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San Luis Obispo Children's Museum: The Circuit Lab, Megan Garcia, Victoria Higgins, Michael Xie

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Executive Summary

Over a nine month period, the senior project team worked closely with the San Luis Obispo Children’s Museum to develop a new interactive exhibit for the museum’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) floor. The initial budget given for this project was $3,000. The museum’s requirements for a new exhibit were that it must be safe for young children to use, require minimal supervision, is interactive, has learning objectives, and is economically feasible and sustainable. The team chose to build an exhibit that would teach young children about simple circuitry and electronics.

First, extensive research of circuits, children’s …

Cooling And Heating Season Impacts Of Right-Sizing Of Fixed- And Variable-Capacity Heat Pumps With Attic And Indoor Ductwork, Florida Solar Energy Center, James Cummings

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The U.S. Department of Energy's research team Building America Partnership for Advanced Residential Construction implemented two phases of experiments to examine the cooling and heating seasonal and peak demand performance of a variable-capacity 2-ton SEER 22 heat pump versus a 3-ton variable-capacity SEER 21 heat pump with attic ducts and indoor ducts. The experiments also compared the cooling and heating seasonal and peak demand performance of 2-ton versus 3-ton fixed-capacity SEER 13 heat pumps with attic ducts and indoor ducts.

Cal Poly Sae Formula Electric Chassis, Brandon Stitt, Rachel Brooks, Christopher L. Pell

Mechanical Engineering

The Cal Poly Formula Electric team has been in need of a chassis redesign, making that a logical choice for a senior project. The original goal of the project was to build the lightest possible frame while still maintaining adequate strength and stiffness. The existing frame made a good starting point. The steel tube spaceframe weighed a colossal 105 lb. There was ample room for improvement, even with a similar spaceframe design. The greatest potential to reduce weight lay in submitting designs under the Alternative Frame (AF) rule set. This could avoid the added weight of many required tubes. The …

Human Powered Vehicle Frame Design, Matthew S. Allen, Peter B. Aumann, Trent J. Hellmann

Mechanical Engineering

This report discusses the Human Powered Vehicle Frame Design senior project’s contributions to the design, manufacture, testing, and competition of the Cal Poly Human Powered Vehicle Club’s 2015 vehicle, Sweet Phoenix. The project’s guiding rules and timeline were dictated by the ASME Human Powered Vehicle Challenge (HPVC), held in April 2015. The Club sought to improve upon its previous vehicle, Aria, which suffered from a range of faults including a catastrophic structural failure at the 2014 HPVC. Largely in response to this failure, the Frame Design project’s major focus was Sweet Phoenix’s frame, from concept to manufacturing. During the design …

Innovative Connectivity Ensuring Education (I.-C.E.E.), Luke Cole, Andrew Ma, Nicholas Ross, Daniel Williams

Electrical Engineering

This is the critical design review for the Telepresence/Telerobotic Technology for Children with Disabilities Project by team I.- C.E.E. (Innovative Connectivity Ensuring Education). This report details our telepresence system design for our client (Nathan Stilts) including design choices/justification, testing verification and procedures, and chosen components for implementation. There are seven chapters in total starting with introductory/background information followed by hardware and software design, verification, and testing and concludes with the current status of the project and what future work may need to be included.

Hydromodus: An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Alex Kost, Anu Mahinkanda, Jordan Read

Electrical Engineering

Hydromodus is a student-led multidisciplinary project conceived by Jordan Read designed to provide a low-cost modular hardware and software solution for researchers and scientists. For the scope of the Senior Project class, it is designed to be a baited remote underwater vehicle (BRUV), but the platform is highly modifiable and open-source.

Analysis Of Vibroacoustic Properties Of Dimpled Beams Using A Boundary Value Model, Kyle R. Myers

Dissertations

Attention has been given recently to the use of dimples as a means of passively altering the vibroacoustic properties of structures. Because of their geometric complexity, previous studies have modeled dimpled structures using the finite element method. However, the dynamics of dimpled structures are not completely understood. The goal of this study is to provide a better understanding of these structures through the development of a boundary value model (BVM) using Hamilton's Variational Principle. The focus of this study is on dimpled beams, which represent the simplest form of a dimpled structure.

A general model of a beam with N …

Nanofiber-Based Membrane Separators For Lithium-Ion Batteries, Mataz Alcoutlabi, Hun Lee, Xiangwu Zhang

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Nanofiber-based membranes were prepared by two different methods for use as separators for Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). In the first method, Electrospinning was used for the fabrication of Polyvinylidene fluoride PVDF nanofiber coatings on polyolefin microporous membrane separators to improve their electrolyte uptake and electrochemical performance. The nanofiber-coated membrane separators show better electrolyte uptake and ionic conductivity than that for the uncoated membranes. In the second method, Forcespinning® (FS) was used to fabricate fibrous cellulose membranes as separators for LIBs. The cellulose fibrous membranes were made by the Forcespinning® of a cellulose acetate solution precursor followed by a subsequent alkaline hydrolysis …

Aluminum Plasmonic Metamaterials For Structural Color Printing, F. Cheng, Jie Gao, L. Stan, D. Rosenmann, D. Czaplewski, Xiaodong Yang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Real-Time Monitoring Of Laser Powder Bed Fusion Process Using High-Speed X-Ray Imaging And Diffraction, C. Zhao, K. Fezzaa, R. W. Cunningham, H. Wen, F. De Carlo, Lianyi Chen, A. D. Rollett, T. Sun

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Structural Color Printing Based On Plasmonic Metasurfaces Of Perfect Light Absorption, F. Cheng, Jie Gao, T. S. Luk, Xiaodong Yang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Investigation Of Parameters Affecting The Nanoinjection Of Hela 229 Cancer Cells, Tyler E. Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to deliver sequences of DNA and other molecular loads across the membrane of a cell and into its nucleus is an area of interest in the medical community. One of its many applications is that of gene therapy. In contrast to other forms of treatment, gene therapy seeks to treat diseases at the cellular level. The success of these treatments depends on the technologies for cell transfection that are available. Physical methods are sometimes able to overcome poor efficiencies of chemical methods and the safety concerns of viral methods, but are usually impractical due to the limited number …

On The Free Surface Skipping Characteristics Of Highly Deformable Elastic Spheres, Randy C. Hurd

Theses and Dissertations

When a highly deformable elastic sphere impacts a water surface at an oblique angle it can skip several times in a manner similar to a skipping stone. However, this sphere seems to skip more readily and with more ease than a traditional skipping stone. This thesis examines the improved skipping characteristics of highly deformable elastic spheres made from cured silicone rubber. The effect of impact velocity, impact angle, sphere diamter and material shear modulus on ricochet trajectory is experimentally examined using high speed photography and image processing techniques. Experimental evaluation shows that deformation is the primary contributor to an increased …

Deltronic Solutions Delta 3d Printer, Ramon Santos, Justin James, Taylor Chris, Stephen Marshall, Paul Maalouf

Mechanical Engineering

The Delta 3D Printer project is a 2014-2015 Cal Poly ME senior project sponsored by Dr. Jose Macedo, Professor and Department Chair of the Cal Poly IME Department; Yaskawa America, Inc., industry-leading producer of high-quality electronic drives and motors; and Bell-Everman, Inc., producer of high-precision embedded motion systems. The Delta 3D Printer project was conceived by Dr. Macedo as a collaboration between Cal Poly engineering and Yaskawa America. The majority of delta 3d printers on the market utilize stepper motors to control the print head motion. The 3D printer for this project was designed to use servo motors instead of …

Vibration Table For Environmental Chamber, Michael Czabaranek, Dylan De Caussin

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.