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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Parametric Design Of Flywheel For An Electric Punch Press, Prashant Dhakal Apr 2021

Parametric Design Of Flywheel For An Electric Punch Press, Prashant Dhakal

Honors Theses

Almost all designs start with a design requirement. These may be weight, volume, clearance, and even custom calculations. Finding a solution that meets these requirements often involves tedious and time-consuming iterations. Once the solution has been found, the design must be optimized to find the best possible solution. Finding the ‘best possible design’ requires substantial time and effort dedicated to iterating and analyzing the potential model solutions. This is where Parametric design comes into play. The Parametric design aids in specifying the key parameters of the design and makes changes interactively, with the model updating automatically. The purpose of this …


Remote Water Metering In Venecia, Nicaragua, Jeffrey Wettstein Jun 2015

Remote Water Metering In Venecia, Nicaragua, Jeffrey Wettstein

Honors Theses

The senior Capstone Design Project is the culmination of over three years of undergraduate work in electrical engineering, and other related fields. The project allows students to demonstrate their knowledge on a tangible design. Starting from a blank slate, the Capstone process asks students to carefully move through every stage of design in order to create the most effect output. Water shortage is a major problem for the entire world including the United States, but particularly in developing countries like Nicaragua. The community of Venecia, Nicaragua has a unique water problem. Community members leave taps running in fear that if …


Evolving Soft Robots With Vibration Based Movement, Andrew Danise Jun 2014

Evolving Soft Robots With Vibration Based Movement, Andrew Danise

Honors Theses

Creating effective designs for soft robots is extremely difficult due to the large number of different possibilities for shape, material properties, and movement mechanisms. Due to the lack of methods to design soft robots, previous research has used evolutionary algorithms to tackle this problem of overwhelming options. A popular technique is to use generative encodings to create designs using evolutionary algorithms because of their modularity and ability to induce large scale coordinated change. The main drawback of generative encodings is that it is difficult to know where along the ontogenic trajectory resides the phenotype with the highest fitness. The two …


Evolutionary Fabrication: An Autonomous System Of Invention, Tim Kuehn Jun 2012

Evolutionary Fabrication: An Autonomous System Of Invention, Tim Kuehn

Honors Theses

Evolutionary algorithms have had success in designing complex objects, ranging from antennae used in NASA's Space Technology 5 mission to astronomical telescope lenses. However, evolutionary design is limited by the ability of a simulation to accurately represent the physical world. Addition-ally, evolved designs may be well described, but they carry no set of speci˝c instructions describing how to physically create such a design. Evolutionary Fabrication (EvoFab) recti˝es this: EvoFab is a machine built upon a process that can, in principle, automatically invent and build anything, from soft robots to new toys, by evolving the process, not the product. We have …


Evolution Of Flow In Games, Paul J. Tunison Jun 2011

Evolution Of Flow In Games, Paul J. Tunison

Honors Theses

Every one wants to play a fun game, but ”fun” is a subjective quality. Flow, a psychological theory to define what ”fun” is, states that, for an activity to be considered fun, the chal-lenge it presents must correlate with that participant’s abilities such that the activity is neither too easy or too difficult. One of the biggest problems for game designers is balancing the difficulty of its content in such a way that it appeals to the largest audience possible. In order to broaden audiences, de-velopers need to invest effort into creating numerous, discrete balances that are aligned to varying …