Computer-Aided Engineering and Design Commons^™

Mars Mini Rover Sample Retrieval Robotic Claw, Cami Chambers, Ani Lachikian, Alexa Ramirez, Alex Power

Mechanical Engineering

This project involves several key stakeholders, including the Poly1 Rover Club, Professor Rich Murray, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The primary objective is to develop an improved robotic claw capable of retrieving sample tubes left by the Perseverance Rover on the Martian surface. In tackling this challenge, the design must account for the harsh Mars climate while integrating cameras and electrical components, durable structure, and a rotational component to the Mini-Rover claw without incorporating an additional motor, sample storage unit, structural aspects or unnecessary weight. The current Mini-Rover consists of a four-degree-of-freedom robotic arm with joints often referred to …

Mechanical Engineering Senior Design Capstone Modine Engineering: Collapsible Hvac Coil Expansion Table, Austin M. Hipskind

Honors Theses

For the Mechanical Engineering Senior Design class, teams of seniors were asked to find a sponsor company willing to provide a problem they were experiencing at a local plant. Using the skills gained throughout college, they were asked to go through a standardized problem-solving method to develop a solution for the sponsor company. I was teamed with Fernando Arellano and Henry Lindsey to work with Modine Engineering on creating a modular and collapsible table for use with large, custom-designed coils. This table would have to hold large, heavy coils during the expansion process. Modine requested a 3D design, the cost …

The Trials And Tribulations Of Building An Ebike From Recycled Parts, Olivia Conrady

Senior Honors Projects

The United States is far from being “walkable” in most suburban areas. Though public transportation has grown in its infrastructure in some large cities, it is far from sufficient. As a result of this, millions of people drive their cars every single day -- a practice that is unsustainable and becoming an increasingly evident issue. One possible solution that has become popular is the use of electric bicycles, since they are less physically taxing than a normal bike and allow for quicker transport. Though electric bicycles have been on the rise, they are still well outside of many people’s budget, …

Autonomous Bottling And Packaging System - Mechanical Bottling Portion, Kathryn Gray

Honors College Theses

This report details the complete mechanical design of an autonomous bottling automation system. This system is fully integrated with a bottling and packaging system. The scope of the full project is to successfully bottle and cap twelve small bottles (approximately 68 cm3) in under three minutes and thirty seconds. The bottles shall be filled with an “electrolyte” and water mixture, and the mixture should be fully mixed. To complete this task, two tanks will dispense liquid (one electrolyte, and one water) into the bottles. Each tank shall have a measuring chamber, that will fill with the correct amount of volume …

Electromagnetically Actuated Modular Robots With Controlled Self-Assembly And On-Demand Disassembly, Anuruddha Bhattacharjee

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Modular reconfigurable robots, with on-demand assembly and disassembly, offer the possibility of mesoscale (milli- and microscale) manufacturing. However, most of the existing modular robotic platforms currently being designed and functionalized rely on complex actuation and assembly mechanisms and so lack further scalability and transformability required for mesoscale applications. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to develop a novel scalable modular robotic platform with controlled self-assembly, disassembly, and reconfiguration techniques using an external electromagnetic field. While current cutting-edge research in this area uses a single magnet to move one module at a time into the target position, this dissertation explores processes to move …

Exploring Methods For Recycling Filament Waste In 3d Printing, Max Rios Carballo

Publications and Research

The goal of the current study is to investigate cutting-edge techniques for recycling filament waste from 3D printing procedures. Appropriate waste management techniques are required to reduce this trash's harmful environmental consequences. The goal of the project is to look at new methods for recycling filament waste in order to minimize disposal and encourage reuse. To acquire data from pertinent papers and research, a thorough literature review methodology was used. The findings show that this issue may be resolved utilizing a variety of recycling techniques, including shredding, melting, and re-extrusion. The type of filament waste and the intended goal will …

Geometrically Complex Planar Heat Exchangers, Derli Dias Do Amaral Junior, Jose Lage

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

In this study, geometrically complex planar heat exchangers, designed in line with the Constructal Law and operating at steady-state, are investigated numerically. The work is divided into two parts, one focusing on diffusion heat transfer in a rectangular plane and another on conjugate diffusion-convection heat transfer in a circular plane heat exchanger.

In the first part, a heat generating rectangular solid volume made of a low conductivity material is cooled through a small, isothermal side-section of the domain. The diffusion cooling process is improved by distributing within the heat generating material a fixed amount of a high conductivity material. The …

Anisotropic Plasticity Modeling Of Thin Sheets And Its Application To Micro Channel Forming Of Steel Foils, Jie Sheng

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Thin sheet metals and ultrathin metal foils produced by industrial rolling processes are textured polycrystalline materials and their mechanical behaviors may depend strongly on the orientation of applied loading. Consideration of such plastic anisotropy in advanced modeling of these materials is of the paramount importance in designing optimal manufacturing processes for automotive and other applications using finite element methods. This research addresses several critical issues in anisotropic plasticity modeling and its applications in analyzing micro channel forming of ultrathin stainless-steel foils. An experimental study has first been carried out on the accuracy and sensitivity of measuring the plastic strain ratios …

Adjustable Height Pedestal Grinder Stand, Josef Zagorski, Zachary Wedel, Michael Sitar, Daniel Zevenbergen

Mechanical Engineering

Pedestal grinders are one of the most common machines found in machine shops today. The current industry standard for mounting a grinder is on a fixed single pillar, cast iron pedestal. A fixed pedestal allows for no vertical adjustment for shop users of different sizes and is a safety hazard. This report further defines this problem and proposes an iterative design process to meet the needs and wants of the customer. The adjustable-height pedestal grinder stand Senior Project team used this problem and design process to successfully complete the project within the allotted time. The first major deliverable and milestone …

Magnetic Gradient-Based Magnetic Tweezer System For 3d And Swarm Control Of Microswimmer, Xiao Zhang

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Microscale manipulation has very promising potential in medical applications such as drug delivery, minimal and invasion surgery. Contactless control is preferable as remote manipulation is necessary for in vivo applications. Among different control methods, magnetic power source is more suitable and robust for the applications mentioned above. Presented here is a magnetic tweezer system, which manipulates microscale magnetic particles using magnetic forces created by magnetic field gradient. The proposed system has three advantages: First, force applied by the magnetic tweezer system does not contact with the target object and can be generated in different directions. Second, the magnetic tweezer system …

Data Analysis To Evaluate The Performance Of Breathing Masks Used For Filtering Nano-Level Particles At Manufacturing Sites, Gracia M. Dardano

Honors College Theses

The work performed in this research aims to evaluate the performance of commercially available breathing masks in filtering airborne nanoparticles at manufacturing sites. Nanoparticles are found virtually anywhere, from dust in a worksite to a simple sneeze. Therefore, they pose a substantial threat to human health as their velocity and volatility are high. This research analyzes if current efforts of breathing masks to hinder nanoparticles are effective, especially at manufacturing sites. Data has been collected in order to analyze the behavior of nanoparticles and to measure nanoparticle levels at manufacturing sites and its working environment. Data is statistical in nature …

Homogenization Of Composite And Cellular Materials Incorporating Microstructure And Surface Energy Effects, Ahmad Gad

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

In the last few decades, the popularity of composite and cellular materials has rapidly increased through their widespread applications in multiple engineering fields including aerospace, automotive, civil and biomedical. However, to a large extent, the success of their practical applications depends on our ability to predict their mechanical behavior by using high-fidelity mechanics models.

Micromechanical modeling of composite and cellular materials is a challenging task due to the heterogeneous nature of such materials and the interactions among various constituent phases at the microscopic level, which result in non-homogeneous deformation, strain and stress fields. Therefore, it is necessary to develop simple …

Graphs And Cad: Analyzing The Experience Of A Mechanical Engineering Intern, Matthew Des Biens

Celebration of Learning

A reflection on the experiences of a mechanical engineering intern at Bergstrom Inc., this presentation, by Senior Matt Des Biens, will discuss what it was like working for a manufacturing and design company making HVAC units for large customers across the world. The highlights will be on the projects he worked on, the things that he learned, and his views on working for the company as a whole.

Design And Control Of Fiber Encapsulation Additive Manufacturing, Matt Saari

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

This work presents the design, development, and analysis of the Fiber Encapsulation Additive Manufacturing (FEAM) system developed at the Laboratory for Additive Manufacturing Robotics \& Automation at the Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University. The innovation introduced by FEAM is the ability to insert a continuous fiber of different material into the flowing extrudate. Correctly positioning the fiber feed inside the extrudate while turning the fiber in arbitrary directions is a critical aspect of the technology. This will allow for the full exploitation of the capabilities of the FEAM technology to produce robotic components that actuate and sense. …

My Catalyst, Gabrielle Gambino Lyon

Celebration of Learning

Over the course of my internship and shadow program with Pepper Lawson Construction and Ziegler Cooper Architects, I was able to explore the various career paths involved in the design, construction, and civil engineering fields. My work on the construction site of a high-rise apartment building located in the heart of Houston, TX allowed me first-hand experience working and learning alongside project engineers, contractors, building developers, and the construction team.

This project was the perfect confluence of my main areas of interest: structural, mechanical, civil, and environmental engineering, as well as architecture. My daily work consisted of on-site walk throughs, …

Micro-Architectured Metamaterials: Design And Analysis, Li Ai

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Metamaterials are engineered materials with unusual properties deriving mainly from their micro-architectures rather than composition. They have attracted increasing attention owing to their tailorable multi-functional properties that cannot be exhibited by naturally-occurring or traditionally-manufactured materials. Materials with a negative Poisson’s ratio (PR) and materials with a non-positive coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) are examples of mechanical metamaterials. In this dissertation, metamaterials with negative Poisson’s ratios and negative coefficients of thermal expansion are designed using both heuristic approaches and topology optimization methods.

Firstly, based on a star-shaped re-entrant structure, three two-dimensional (2-D) periodic cellular materials are developed, which can be tailored …

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of A 3d Printer Based Microfluidic System, Carlton A. Mcmullen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A pneumatically actuated PDMS based microfluidic devices were designed and fabricated by soft-lithography. Two types of molds were fabricated out of different material for this experiment. The first mold, (device 1), was fabricated from a sheet of Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) material, similar to Plexiglas. The device features were micro-engraved onto the face of the material. The second mold, (device 2), was fabricated from the use of fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing. The pumping efficiency of the PDMS devices was analyzed through the characterization of the micro-pumps flowrate with respect to the pumps driving pressure and the actuation frequency. Tested …