Applied Mechanics Commons^™

Fatigue Tester, Nicholas Fazio

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project is to combine all my experience, knowledge and skills that I’ve acquired over the years as a Mechanical Engineering Technology student to completely design and build a fatigue tester. This will give me valuable experience in the process of designing and assembling a product and give me a great example to add to my portfolio. The tester will be completed through a process of researching design and modeling. Once everything is properly calculated and designed the parts that can be fabricated will. The rest will be ordered and then everything will be assembled. Upon completion, …

Recumbent Bicycle Balancing Aid, James Hager

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

For our senior design project, our team will be consulting to create a balancing aid system intended for the recumbent bicycle shown below in Figure 1. The owner of the bicycle is Robert Henderson, a former United States Navy sailor from Northeast Ohio who picked up biking and skiing while he was stationed in Maine in the late 80’s. While there, he took to the mountains on the rugged terrain and brought this passion of biking back home to share with his wife, Johanna once he completed his service to his country. Biking became an integral part of the …

Garbage Disposal, Madison Popa, Tyler Miller, Mitchell Wheeler, Johnathon Klebe

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this report is to outline a new design for a sink garbage disposal system. The goal of this design is to develop a garbage disposal that could be made for less money, which would turn into a cost savings for the consumer and would lead to an increase in the amount of garbage disposal systems being used throughout the world. This allows the garbage disposal system to be marketed to different parts of the world that currently can’t afford the systems available on the market.

The increased use of garbage disposals, help reduce the amount of organic …

Human Powered Vehicle Design Team: Speed Variable Steering Stabilizer, Eric Miller, Matt Kraml

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Human Powered Vehicle Competition (HPVC) is held annually by ASME at a few locations. The University of Akron has competed in the ASME-East and ASME-West competitions over the past handful of years against universities from all over the world. Objectives of each team for the competition are three-fold: vehicle design, racing performance, and innovation. Our senior design project involved working on the innovation concept for ASME-East 2018 held at Penn State University during the weekend of 4/13. Speed variable steering was decided upon by the entire HPVC team early in the design process as the innovation choice for this …

Nfpa Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge, Ean H. Dickerhoof

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Every year the National Fluid Power Association hosts a Fluid Powered Vehicle Challenge, this exposes students from universities all around the United States to the power and possibilities of hydraulics. This year the University of Akron’s team of engineers set out to design a bicycle that would be competitive and innovative in all aspects of the competition. In order to accomplish this, the designed bicycle must excel in three categories of competition; a sprint race, an endurance race, and an efficiency challenge.

To accomplish this task the University of Akron’s team of engineers used a lightweight bicycle frame with many …

Chocolate Bar Wrapping Machine, Austin M. Hoff, Daniel R. Trepke, Caleb B. Krichbuam

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Gilbert Chocolates has proposed to manufacture a machine to wrap chocolate bars. This machine is intended to replace two people wrapping the chocolate bars by hand, which is a time consuming method. This is especially apparent between October and January when the workers are working long hours in preparation for the Christmas rush of customers. Currently wrapping a bar takes about a minute and Gilbert Chocolates wants this time reduced down to 20-30 seconds. The budget for this project is set at $1000, and is being funded by the company. This machine needs to fit in a cubic foot of …

Lawn Mower Lift, Randall E. Schelcher

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Our team of engineers were given the task of coming up with a design project and designing the system, creating calculations, and brainstorming ideas. We set out to design a riding lawn mower lift. The purpose of this design was to assist in general maintenance like replacing blades, oil changes, etc.

To accomplish this task, our team started to brainstorm ideas and make sketches to look at all the options. We then did research and looked at different size lawn mowers and looked at the specifications. This helped our team to be able to design the size of platform needed …

The University Of Akron Nfpa 2015/2016 Chainless Challenge, Andrew Tupta, Andrew Ball, Stefan Stamboldziev, Jordon Spence, Sean Catchpole

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Parker Hannifin has issued a challenge to student design teams of creating a Chainless bike using a hydraulic system. Each student design team will be assigned a technical advisor from the University. The project will be divided into two phases after the initial kickoff. The first phase will align with senior design course for motion control and hydraulics and will yield the student obtaining knowledge in hydraulics, including bio-degradable fluids, pneumatics, electromechanical systems, green technologies (sustainable energy) and controlling force and motion. Students will be provided data sheets, a list of in-stock Parker components and by the end of the …

2015 Zips Sae Baja Brakes And Throttle System, Philip A. Bennett

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The SAE Baja student design team at The University of Akron is one of the longest-standing design teams at the university. The purpose of this team is to design, manufacture, test, and race an off-road vehicle within the guidelines of competition established by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The vehicle is made up of a small number of subsystems including frame, drivetrain, suspension, steering, and braking. The following will discuss all aspects of the design process of the braking and throttle system of the 2015 Zips Baja car. This process includes several steps and considerations such as design goals, system …

Design Of An Sae Baja Racing Off-Road Vehicle Powertrain, Eric T. Payne

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

No abstract provided.