Other Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

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, …

Effect Of Surface Fluid Entrapment In A Laminar Flat Plate Boundary Layer, Abigail Hays

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

For streamlined objects in laminar flow, the drag is dominated by friction drag. To counteract this, the boundary condition of the object can be changed to introduce an apparent slip on the surface. A number of approaches have been proposed for introducing surface slip to reduce drag and viscous resistance in fluid flows. This work investigates a novel approach to providing slip via fluid entrapment in a perforated domain embedded in the surface. The fluid entrapment system uses a cavity underneath the domain to allow entrapment of fluid of the same type, or supply air to the surface perforations in …

Leadership And Project Management In Engineering: Baja Tube Bender, Maysyn Tm Sorensen

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Typical coursework for Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering students does not deeply focus on project management and leadership. Detailed in the following documentation is review of my Mechanical Engineering Senior Design capstone project as well as analysis of final presentations of other capstone projects. The Senior Design capstone projects spanned both semesters of the ‘22-’23 academic school year. After the first semester of my project I produced a post-mortem report to analyze the project’s progress and suggest improvements for the project, design, and team interaction. These improvements were compiled into an action plan and implemented in the spring semester. When the project …

Microparticle Propulsion For In Vivo Navigation, Louis Rogowski

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Microscale propulsion impacts a diverse array of fields, with simplistic microrobots allowing for novel innovations in microscale surgery and drug delivery. Propulsion at the microscale is constrained by physics, with time-reversal and geometric symmetries limiting available propulsion mechanisms. However, certain fluid environments and surface coatings allow for the propulsion of microparticles through externally applied magnetic fields. Presented here is a detailed analysis of microparticles propelling using spontaneous symmetry breaking, flagella surface coatings, and multi-modal actuation mechanisms. Spontaneous symmetry breaking in nonlinearly viscoelastic fluids is presented for the first time in literature, with two equal and opposite propulsion states existing along …

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 …

Critical Point Identification In 3d Velocity Fields, Mohammadreza Zharfa

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Classification of flow fields involving strong vortices such as those from bluff body wakes and animal locomotion can provide important insight to their hydrodynamic behavior. Previous work has successfully classified 2D flow fields based on critical points of the velocity field and the structure of an associated weighted graph using the critical points as vertices. The present work focuses on extension of this approach to 3D flows. To this end, we have used the Gauss-Bonnet theorem to find critical points and their indices in the 3D velocity vector field, which functions similarly to the Poincare-Bendixon theorem in 2D flow fields. …

Graphene-Based Water Desalination Using Atomistic Simulations, Thanh Chinh Nguyen

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

My research focused on investigating saltwater transport through nanoporous graphene membranes using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Particularly, in this dissertation, we focused on pressure-driven flows of salt water through uncharged and charged nanoporous graphene membranes for water desalination applications. In the first study, desalination performance of uncharged single-layer nanoporous graphene membranes was observed based on volumetric flow rate, required pressure drop, and salt rejection efficiency. A functional relationship between the volumetric flow rate, pressure drop, pore diameter, and the dynamic viscosity of saltwater was also examined. In further studies, transport of salt ions through positively and negatively charged single-layer nanoporous …

Molecular Dynamics Studies On Nanoscale Confined Liquids, Alper Celebi

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Liquid transport in nanochannels have been attracting great interests, especially for last two decades, owing to its potential applicability in various fields including biochemistry, medical science and engineering. For exploring and generating new ideas in the field of nanofluidics, molecular simulation techniques have become an ideal way due to the experimental challenges impeding the field of nanofluidics in fabrication and measurements.

In this dissertation, we perform molecular dynamics simulations to investigate liquid transport behavior in nanoscale channels. The expanse of this dissertation concerns several fundamental topics in nanoscale liquid transport phenomena such as liquid properties in nanoscale confinements, interfacial flows …

Sandia Senior Design Collaboration: Vacuum Sensor Design, James L. Valerio, Eric J. Black, Joseph P. Bednarz, David R. Warther

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Sandia National Laboratories has requested a fully mechanical device to close a circuit after launch has occurred and the device enters a vacuum. Intended for applications in rockets and missiles, the device must fit in a 36 degree wedge with a 6.8 inch radius that is 6 inches in height and be ready to bolt onto a rocket. The pressure switch must be prevented from actuating until a launch acceleration ranging from 20 to 27g is detected. The pressure switch must close the circuit after a pressure of 10^-1 Torr is reached and before a pressure of 10^{-6 …}

Workspace Analysis Of A Linear Delta Robot: Calculating The Inscribed Radius, Michael Louis Pauly

Graduate Theses - Mechanical Engineering

One of the most important traits of a robotic manipulator is its work envelope, the space in which the robot can position its end effector. Parallel manipulators, while generally faster, are restricted by smaller work envelopes [1]. As such, understanding the parameters defining a physical robot’s work envelope is essential to the optimal design, selection, and use of robotic parallel manipulators. A Linear Delta Robot (LDR) is a type of parallel manipulator in which three prismatic joints move separate arms which connect to a single triangular end plate [2]. In this study, general inverse kinematics were derived for a linear …

Lightweight Uav Launcher, Ben Miller, Christian Valoria, Corinne Warnock, Jake Coutlee

Mechanical Engineering

This report discusses the design, construction, and testing of a lightweight, portable UAV launcher. There is a current need for a small team of soldiers to launch a US Marine Tier II UAV in a remote location without transport. Research was conducted into existing UAV launcher designs and the pros and cons of each were recorded. This research served as a basis for concept generation during the initial design development stage. It was required that the design weigh less than 110 lbs, occupy a smaller volume than 48" x 24" 18" in its collapsed state, be portable by a single …

The Collapsible Trailer: Design And Manufacture, Robert Hobson

Biomedical Engineering

No abstract provided.