Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Using Computational Fluid Dynamics To Accurately Model Agricultural Spray Nozzles, Zachary Chapman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a tool used by engineers in many industries to study fluid flow. A relatively new industry to adopt the use of CFD is the agricultural industry. The present work seeks to understand whether CFD can be used to accurately model spray nozzles. A spray nozzle commonly used in agricultural spraying was simulated. First, the impact of factors such as mesh size, mesh type, and physics models have on the solution were investigated. Next, a method to pulse the spray was determined. This was required to compare simulation results with experimental data. A user-defined function was …

A Series-Elastic Robot For Back-Pain Rehabilitation, Elhussein Shata

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Robotics research has been broadly expanding into various fields during the past decades. It is widely spread and best known for solving many technical necessities in different fields. With the rise of the industrial revolution, it upgraded many factories to use industrial robots to prevent the human operator from dangerous and hazardous tasks. The rapid development of application fields and their complexity have inspired researchers in the robotics community to find innovative solutions to meet the new desired requirements of the field. Currently, the creation of new needs outside the traditional industrial robots are demanding robots to attend to the …

Strain-Based Mechanical Failure Analysis Of Buried Steel Pipeline Subjected To Landslide Displacement Using Finite Element Method, Sean Goodluck Mamuzo Edeki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Landslide displacement is one of the major threats to the structural integrity of buried oil and natural gas pipelines that are often located far from major markets with terrains prone to permanent ground deformations. These pipelines can experience large longitudinal strains and circumferential deformation resulting from the differential ground movements thereby potentially impacting pipeline safety by adversely affecting structural capacity and leak tight integrity. In order to proffer theoretical basis for the design, safety evaluation and maintenance of pipelines, the failure analysis and mechanical behavior of buried API X65 steel pipeline perpendicularly crossing landslide area was investigated with the Finite …

Impartial Sensor Tasking Via Forecasted Information Content Quantification, Matthew J. Gualdoni, Kyle J. Demars

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The consistently increasing population of space debris in orbit about the Earth is becoming an increasingly unavoidable problem, necessitating a proper handling of the problem of sensor tasking to effectively and efficiently obtain observations of space objects to maintain catalogs of their positions and velocities. A variety of approaches have been explored to achieve this in an autonomous fashion, assisting with space traffic management. This work presents new statistical analysis of the Kullback–Leibler divergence justifying the use of its expected value in generating sensor schedules. This divergence's use as an objective measure is extended to simultaneously consider, in an impartial …

Characterization Of Directed Energy Deposition Additively Manufactured Grcop-42 Alloy, Scott Landes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

GRCop is an alloy family constructed of copper, chromium, and niobium and was developed by NASA for high heat flux applications. The first of its kind, GRCop-84, was specifically designed for the environments seen by channel cooled main combustion chamber liners. To further increase thermal conductivity while maintaining material strength characteristics, the percentage of alloying elements were cut in half and GRCop- 42 was developed. In recent years, NASA has successfully additively manufactured GRCop with comparable material characteristics to wrought GRCop using a Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) process. Benefits of this process include fabrication of intricate cooling channels as …

Optimization Strategies For Myopic And Forecasted Divergence-Based Sensor Tasking Objectives, Matthew J. Gualdoni, Kyle J. Demars

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In light of the ever-increasing value of space assets operating in the presence of a continuously growing population of space objects in orbit about Earth, space situational awareness is becoming more crucial than ever. The process of tracking and maintaining estimates for the numerous assets and space objects is a complex and highly demanding problem, as it requires robust state estimates in the presence of sparse data. As the number of space objects greatly outweighs the number of available sensors, a sensor tasking policy is necessary to properly utilize the available sensor resources in a way that ensures targets are …

Impact Of Considering And Neglecting States On Descent-To-Landing Navigation, Kyle J. Demars, Kari C. Ward

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper develops a novel square-root formulation of the consider/neglect Kalman filter for navigation applications. The proposed filter partitions system parameters into three distinct categories: those to be estimated by the filter, those whose contribution to the system can be considered without explicitly estimating them, and those with sufficiently low effect on the system such that their contribution can be neglected altogether. Discussion on appropriate selection of consider and neglect parameters is provided with specific attention given to descent-to-landing navigation. Monte Carlo simulations and analysis are performed to assess the performance of the square-root consider/neglect filter.

Robustness Metric For Robust Design Optimization Under Time-And Space-Dependent Uncertainty Through Metamodeling, Xinpeng Wei, Xiaoping Du

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Product performance varies with respect to time and space in many engineering applications. This paper discusses how to measure and evaluate the robustness of a product or component when its quality characteristics (QCs) are functions of random variables, random fields, temporal variables, and spatial variables. At first, the existing time-dependent robustness metric is extended to the present time-and space-dependent problem. The robustness metric is derived using the extreme value of the quality characteristics with respect to temporal and spatial variables for the nominal-the-better type quality characteristics. Then, a metamodel-based numerical procedure is developed to evaluate the new robustness metric. The …

Design And Analysis Of Descent-To-Landing Navigation Incorporating Terrain Effects, Kari C. Ward, Gunner S. Fritsch, J. Cameron Helmuth, Kyle J. Demars, James S. Mccabe

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study investigated the ability of a navigation filter to process multiple terrain-based sensors, such as slant-range, slant-speed, and terrain relative navigation sensors, during a descent-to-landing scenario to estimate the state of a landing vehicle. The filtering technique leveraged was based upon a factorized form of the multiplicative extended Kalman filter, and terrain-based measurements were fused with star camera and inertial measurement unit sensor returns to estimate the position, velocity, and attitude of the landing vehicle. Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to assess the performance of the navigation filter along a lunar descent trajectory, as well as the consistency …

A Brief Review On 3d Bioprinted Skin Substitutes, Fateme Fayyazbakhsh, Ming-Chuan Leu

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Global Escalating Cases of Skin Donor Shortage for Patients with Severe Wounds Warn the Vital Need for Alternatives to Skin Allografts. over the Last Three Decades, Research in the Skin Regeneration Area Has Addressed the Unmet Need for Artificial Skin Substitutes. 3D Bioprinting is a Promising Innovative Technology to Accurately Fabricate Skin Constructs based on Natural or Synthetic Bioinks, Whether Loaded or Not Loaded with Native Skin Cells (I.e., Keratinocytes and Fibroblasts) or Stem Cells in the Prescribed 3D Hierarchal Structure to Create Artificial Multilayer and Single Cell-Laden Construct. in This Paper, the Recent Developments in 3D Bioprinting for …

Design Of An Annular Disc-Shaped Heat Pipe For Air-Cooled Steam Condensers, Ahmad Saleh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Limitations on water utilization are turning into an expanding issue for the power and electricity generation industry. As a contribution to the solution of water consumption problems, utility companies are shifting toward using air-cooled condensers (ACC) in replace to the typical water-cooling methods of once-through cooling and the surface condenser/wet-cooling tower combination. Although the ACC is a dry cooling method, the industry is quite hesitant to switch over to ACC mainly for three reasons: (a) lower power output, (b) higher capital cost, and (c) larger physical footprint. All these drawbacks are because of the high overall thermal resistance of condensing …

Multi-Well Plate Channel Device With Reversible Seals, Haipeng Zhang, Timothy Wei, Sangjin Ryu

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Atherosclerosis is a cardiovascular disease which causes over 26,000 yearly deaths in the United States. This disease involves accumulation of substances in arterial walls (or plaques) that occurs frequently to arterial regions experiencing low shear stress, such as bends and bifurcations. A possible reason of plaque growth in arterial walls is the change of endothelial cell (EC)’s shape, which is related to fluid shear stresses tangentially acting on intimal layer (the EC surface) of the arterial wall. Lambert et al. studied the relationship between EC shape and shear stress (Lambert et al., 2019) using a BioFlux system (Fluxion Bioscienes) and …

Universal Mechanical Exfoliation Of Large-Area 2d Crystals, Yuan Huang, Yu-Hao Pan, Rong Yang, Li-Hong Bao, Lei Meng, Hai-Lan Luo, Yong-Qing Cai, Guo-Dong Liu, Wen-Juan Zhao, Zhang Zhou, Liang-Mei Wu, Zhi-Li- Zhu, Ming Huang, Li-Wei Liu, Lei Liu, Peng Cheng, Ke-Hui Wu, Shi-Bing Tian, Chang-Zhi Gu, You-Guo Shi, Yan-Feng Guo, Zhi Gang Cheng, Jiang-Ping Hu, Lin Zhao, Guan-Hua Yang, Eli Sutter, Peter Sutter, Ye-Liang Wang, Wei Ji, Xing-Jiang Zhou, Hong-Jun Gao

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Two-dimensional materials provide extraordinary opportunities for exploring phenomena arising in atomically thin crystals. Beginning with the first isolation of graphene, mechanical exfoliation has been a key to provide high-quality two-dimensional materials, but despite improvements it is still limited in yield, lateral size and contamination. Here we introduce a contamination-free, one-step and universal Au-assisted mechanical exfoliation method and demonstrate its effectiveness by isolating 40 types of single-crystalline monolayers, including elemental two-dimensional crystals, metal-dichalcogenides, magnets and superconductors. Most of them are of millimeter-size and high-quality, as shown by transfer-free measure- ments of electron microscopy, photo spectroscopies and electrical transport. Large sus- pended …

Benign Ferroelastic Twin Boundaries In Halide Perovskites For Charge Carrier Transport And Recombination, Xun Xiao, Wenhao Li, Yanjun Fang, Ye Liu, Yuchuan Shao, Shuang Yang, Jingjing Zhao, Xuezeng Dai, Rashid Zia, Jinsong Huang

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Grain boundaries have been established to impact charge transport, recombination and thus the power conversion efficiency of metal halide perovskite thin film solar cells. As a special category of grain boundaries, ferroelastic twin boundaries have been recently discovered to exist in both CH3NH3PbI3 thin films and single crystals. However, their impact on the carrier transport and recombination in perovskites remains unexplored. Here, using the scanning photocurrent microscopy, we find that twin boundaries have negligible influence on the carrier transport across them. Photoluminescence (PL) imaging and the spatial-resolved PL intensity and lifetime scanning confirm the electronically benign nature of the twin …

Variations In Plantar Pressure Variables Across Elliptical Trainers In Older Adults, Judith M. Burnfield, Guilherme Manna Cesar, Thad W. Buster

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Background: Ellipticals are used to address walking and cardiorespiratory training goals of older adults, some of whom are at risk for foot injuries. Variations in joint kinematics and muscle demands when using different ellipticals could lead to plantar pressure differences. This study explored plantar pressure variables during gait and use of four ellipticals.

Methods: Plantar pressures were recorded while 10 adults [68.1 (4.5) years] walked and used the True, Octane, Life Fitness, and SportsArt ellipticals. Repeated-measures ANOVAs (5 × 1) identified forefoot and heel differences across conditions.

Findings: Maximum forefoot forces and peak pressures were significantly lower than walking for …

Numerical Analyses And Integration Of Split Lot Sizing Using Lean Benchmark Model For Small Lot Manufacturing In High Mix Low Volume Production, Omkar Bhosale

Theses and Dissertations--Manufacturing Systems Engineering

As the global demand for automobiles has increased rapidly over the last fifty years, customers have become more particular about the characteristics of the autos they want. This change in demand, in part has pushed manufacturing to become more flexible and created a demand for alternative, more efficient processes like the High Mix Low Volume (HMLV) production of vehicles. During HMLV, manufacturers create production lot sizes and schedule to synchronize the production processes to meet customer demand on time. The demand for the automobile parts may not be uniform or parts may not be consumed by the customer immediately, Due …

Human-Skin-Inspired Adaptive Smart Textiles Capable Of Amplified Latent Heat Transfer For Thermal Comfort, Gunwoo Kim, Calvin Gardner, Kyuin Park, Ying Zhong, Sungho Jin

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Thermally adaptive textiles (TATs) enable human subjects to attain thermal comfort without energy consumption, which can lead to enormous energy savings on heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) in buildings. Herein, TAT structures which respond to the sweat and generate pores by opening an array of flap-shaped pores patterned on the fabric surface are proposed. A moisture-driven self-actuator for flap opening by constructing a bilayer consisting of a hygroscopic layer using polyethylene glycol and cellulose acetate, and a hydrophobic polymer using a polyester type polymer, is used and successfully demonstrated an essentially instant 4 °C apparent temperature cooling performance within …

Collagen Production And Niche Engineering: A Novel Strategy For Cancer Cells To Survive Acidosis In Dcis And Evolve, Mehdi Damaghi, Hidetoshi Mori, Samantha Byrne, Liping Xu, Tingan Chen, Joseph Johnson, Nathan D. Gallant, Andriy Marusyk, Alexander D. Borowsky, Robert J. Gillies

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Growing tumors are dynamic and nonlinear ecosystems, wherein cancer cells adapt to their local microenvironment, and these adaptations further modify the environment, inducing more changes. From nascent intraductal neoplasms to disseminated metastatic disease, several levels of evolutionary adaptations and selections occur. Here, we focus on one example of such an adaptation mechanism, namely, “niche construction” promoted by adaptation to acidosis, which is a metabolic adaptation to the early harsh environment in intraductal neoplasms. The avascular characteristics of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) make the periluminal volume profoundly acidic, and cancer cells must adapt to this to survive. Based on discovery …

Spontaneous Formation Of Sub-4 Nm Nanocrystalline Alloy Via Polymorphic Phase Transformation, Ying Zhong, Chunqing Wang, Jin Wang, Huiwen Ma, Sriram Krishnamoorthy, Vladislav Paley, Zijian Weng, Sungho Jin

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

A new phase-transformation-induced path to spontaneous formation of extreme nanograin structure is reported. In-situ-heating-mode-microscopy exhibited a substantial grain-growth of Cu6Sn5. During cooling, the grain-growth continued, but it spontaneously switched to grain-refinement mode on phase transformation through ∼180 °C from η-Cu6Sn5 to η’-Cu6Sn5, ending up with an extremely small nanograin size of ∼2.5 nm. The cooling cycling always restores the nanograin size regardless of thermal exposure history, making this to be the first demonstration to stabilize the nanograin with its own spontaneous behavior. The Young’s Modulus was significantly reduced by ∼×3, and the elongation was remarkably increased by …

Effects Of Chemically Assisted Magnetic Abrasive Finishing Process Parameters On Material Removal Of Inconel 625 Tubes, Gurpreet Singh, Harish Kumar, Harmesh Kumar Kansal, Anil K. Srivastava

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

With technological developments in manufacturing fields, many advanced materials and alloys have been introduced to fulfill industrial requirements. One of such type of advanced materials, Inconel 625 possesses superior materialistic properties and finds number of industrial applications in Aerospace, Marine, Petro-chemical and Solar power stations etc. However, machining and finishing of Inconel 625 components are still remain difficult tasks to deals with. A recently developed finishing process: Magnetic Abrasive Finishing (MAF) process has been experimented to finish Inconel 625 surfaces but this process is not much effective to finish and machine Inconel 625 work surfaces. In present work, Chemically assisted …

A Hybrid Physical Model Based Artificial Neural Network Approach To Predict Surface Texture In The Honing Of Engine Cylinder Bore, Burhan Afzel, Xueping Zhang, Anil K. Srivastava

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

This study proposes a hybrid model that utilizes a physical model and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) approach to predict surface roughness during cylinder bore honing with an improved prediction efficiency of 90% compared to the standalone physical model. As a critical component of internal combustion engine technology, improvement in the surface roughness of cylinder bore can significantly reduce friction, wear and oil consumption, resulting in improved engine performance. Desired surface roughness in cylinder bore is imparted by honing, which serves as the terminal process in cylinder bore manufacturing. The cylinder bore honing process consists of rough honing, fine honing, and …

Generation Of Premix Laminar Flame Speed Library, Sai Prashanth Kumar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Laminar flame speed is an essential parameter in measuring turbulent premixed combustion applied in Spark ignition engines. Instead of using power-law correlations, which is valid only for particular ranges, the procedure for generating a premixed laminar flame speed library is defined using MTU – Master mechanism for a wide range of charge mixture conditions inside an engine combustion chamber: Temperature (300 – 700 K), Pressure (1 – 70 bar) and reactant mixture composition of equivalence ratio (0.4 – 2.0) Laminar flame speed library is generated for methane. The mechanism's performance was improved by adjusting the pre-exponential factor of the …

Active Noise Control Using Carbon Nanotube Thermophones: Case Study For An Automotive Hvac Application, Walker H. Nelson

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The goal of this project was to reduce the overall noise levels emitted by the HVAC components in a vehicle’s cabin. More specifically, the feasibility of achieving this goal using two key technologies was investigated.

The first of these technologies, Active Noise Control (ANC), is a noise attenuation technique that relies on destructive interference that “cancels” unwanted noise. Typically used in situations where physical constraints prevent passive attenuation techniques from being used, ANC is known for its high size-to-effectiveness ratio. This benefit cannot be gained without a cost however; the complexity of ANC systems is significantly higher than their passive …

Development Of An Eco Approach And Departure Application To Improve Energy Consumption Of A Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle In Charge Depleting Mode, Brandon Narodzonek

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A recent study at Michigan Technological University as part of the NEXTCAR DOE APRA-E Project was conducted to determine the potential energy savings of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) equipped with various Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Technologies. One aspect of this study focused on the development of an Eco Approach and Departure (Eco AnD) Application that would further reduce the energy consumed around a signalized intersection.

Many modern intersections are equipped with traffic signals that can broadcast Basic Safety (BSM), MAP, and Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) message sets that contain intersection ID, location, current phase, and cyclic …

Contact Mechanics Of Fish Scale Inspired Exoskeletal Components On A Nonlinear Elastic Substrate, Jeremy Stephen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The contact mechanics of structures with exoskeletal components deviate significantly from classical Hertzian and non-linear models. In the case of fish scale inspired samples under blunt indentation loading these factors are inherently tied to both the size of the indenter and the scales' distribution and orientation. Control of these geometric parameters provides a pathway to tailor the properties of surfaces for better grip, damage mitigation and controlled deformation. This study explores the response of a substrate with stiff scales protruding from its surface, which is comprised of a soft elastomeric material with properties typical of those in soft robotics applications. …

Evaluation Of The Mechanical Properties Of Germanium-On-Insulator (Geoi) Films By Raman Spectroscopy And Nanoindentation, Y.S. Mohammed, Kai Zhang, S. Heissler, H. Baumgart, A. A. Elmustafa

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Germanium-on-insulator (GeOI) films fabricated using the Smart Cut™ wafer bonding and film exfoliation technology were investigated for the mechanical properties and induced phase transformations by using nanoindentation and Raman spectroscopy experiments. The hardness and modulus results of the GeOI films are significantly different from the literature published Silicon-on-Insulator and bulk germanium results. The GeOI films are softer and more flexible as compared to bulk Ge hardness and stiffness properties. The Raman spectroscopy of the spherical indents indicates bands of metastable Ge phases @ 220 cm⁻¹, 195 cm⁻¹, and 184 cm⁻¹ wavenumbers. Our results demonstrate that …

A Cfd Study Investigating Drag Reduction For Different Offset And Inline Distance For Two Trucks Platooning, Wael Mokhtar, Kyle Dinger, Shardul Kachare, Mdrazib Hossain, Colin Britcher

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The automotive industry invests huge resources to improve fuel consumption of commercial vehicles by improving their aerodynamic efficiency. Recently, numerous studies investigating the effect of platooning on aerodynamic drag of semi-trucks have been performed by researchers indicating a positive impact. For the present study, a three-dimensional computational study was performed to investigate the effect of varying offset and linear distance during platooning on the total drag of two semi-trucks. The study was conducted on a full-scale model using Reynold’s Averaged Navier-Strokes governing equations for a moving ground simulation using the STAR-CCM+ computational package. Furthermore, for turbulence, the standard k- …

Development Of An Anatomically And Electrically Conductive Brain Phantom For Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Hamzah A. Magsood

Theses and Dissertations

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive technique for diagnostics, prognostic, and treatments of various neurological diseases. However, the lack of anatomically realistic brain phantoms has made the experimental verification of stimulation strength in the form of induced electric fields/voltages in the brain tissues an impediment to developing new TMS coils, stimulators, and treatment protocols. There are significant technological, safety, and ethical limitations to test the potential TMS treatment procedures or develop enhancements and refine them on humans or animals. This work aims to bridge the gap by introducing and developing an innovative manufacturing and fabrications process to produce a …

Development Of A Single Use Device Intended To Wash Blood Clot Debris From A Stent Retriever In The Operating Room, Shane Diller

Theses and Dissertations

Ischemic stroke is a life-threatening condition that requires immediate surgical intervention to remove the blood clot that is lodged in the blood vessels of the brain. Mechanical thrombectomy, performed by an endovascular surgeon, involves inserting a stent retriever, which deploys distally and attempts to capture the clot when dragged backwards. A complication prevalent in 50% - 67% of cases is that the blood clot is only partially removed and clings to the mesh framework of the stent. The operating surgeon must either clean the debris from the stent retriever, to be reinserted or throw the stent retriever away and open …

Exploring Strategies For Adapting Traditional Vehicle Design Frameworks To Autonomous Vehicle Design, Alex Munoz

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Fully autonomous vehicles are expected to revolutionize transportation, reduce the cost of ownership, contribute to a cleaner environment, and prevent the majority of traffic accidents and related fatalities. Even though promising approaches for achieving full autonomy exist, developers and manufacturers have to overcome a multitude of challenged before these systems could find widespread adoption. This multiple case study explored the strategies some IT hardware and software developers of self-driving cars use to adapt traditional vehicle design frameworks to address consumer and regulatory requirements in autonomous vehicle designs. The population consisted of autonomous driving technology software and hardware developers who are …