A flexible flowshop, comprised of one or more stages having unrelated parallel machines, is investigated in this research. Unrelated parallel machines can perform the same function but have different capacity or capability. Since this problem is motivated by industry research, dynamic job release times and dynamic machine availability times have...
Micro- and nanotechnologies are promising advancements across many industrial sectors, including alternative energy, chemical processing, and healthcare. In particular, a focus of research has been in manufacturing process development aimed at microdevice cost reduction and quality improvement. Microdevices take advantage of enhanced heat and mass transfer to improve energy and...
Most existing methods for generating individual task time estimates in production systems where jobs move through various manually operated workstations remain tedious and time consuming. For existing systems, average task times may vary considerably from prior estimates causing system inefficiencies, poor scheduling and poor planning decisions. Accurate and up-to-date estimates...
This research studied the relationship between three input variables and outcomes related to the use of quality circles (QCC) in a Chinese manufacturing company. After a thorough review of the literature, three managerial input variables were identified, including goal clarity, goal difficulty, and management support. Five outcomes were measured, including...
Cellular manufacturing, which is also referred to as group technology among researchers, has primarily been used as a means to increase productivity, efficiency and flexibility. Under group technology, similar jobs, which have similar shape, material, and processing operations are assigned to the same group. Moreover, dissimilar machines are assigned to...
This research addresses fleet-sizing for reusable containers that are used for
protection, transportation, and storage of parts between a component plant and
assembly plant. These reusable containers are often expensive and occupy a
large amount of storage space when empty and full. Having a large container
fleet comes with higher...
A microchannel heat exchanger was designed for diesel waste heat recovery and its performance was evaluated. The 21x15x8 cm unit was constructed from diffusion brazed stainless steel lamina and weighed 11 kg. Operating from a 13.4 kW generator with an exhaust temperature of 500 °C the unit delivered 11.1 kW...
Critical success factors (CSFs) are those things that must be done correctly for a project to be successful; however, CSFs are not sufficient by themselves to guarantee success. CSFs, as identified in the literature, vary from study to study. In addition, previous studies have not typically included contextual details for...
Training is a key business process used to increase the skills and knowledge of employees in an effort to improve overall performance. Evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of training processes is necessary to ensure time, money, and resources are used to provide the most benefit possible. This investigation is...
Increasing access to modern forms of energy in developing countries is a
crucial component to eliminating extreme poverty around the world. Pico-hydro
schemes (less than 5-kW range) can provide environmentally sustainable electricity
and mechanical power to rural communities, generally more cost-effectively than
diesel/gasoline generators, wind turbines, or solar photovoltaic systems....
In cases where complex systems routinely experience extreme operating conditions, preventative maintenance is often employed to guard against system failure. Yet, with accessible real-time data and the standard practice becoming prohibitively expensive, the test stand can serve as a vital contributor to the development of system health and reliability estimations....
We present a novel control strategy for running which is robust to disturbances, and makes excellent use of passive dynamics for energy economy. The motivation for our control strategy is based on observations of animals, which are able to economically walk and run over varying terrain and ground dynamics. It...
Thermoelectric materials are playing an increasingly significant role in the global effort to develop sustainable energy technologies. Consequently, the demand for materials with greater thermoelectric efficiency has stimulated the development of state-of-the-art interstitially doped skutterudite-based materials. However, since intermetallics are often embrittled by interstitial substitution, optimal skutterudite-based device design, manufacture,...
Chemical and structural heterogeneity and the resulting interaction of coexisting phases can lead
to extraordinary behaviours in oxides, as observed in piezoelectric materials at morphotropic phase boundaries and relaxor ferroelectrics. However, such phenomena are rare in metallic alloys. Here we show that, by tuning the presence of structural heterogeneity in...
Future engineers need to be competitive in today's expanding global industries. They must have capabilities beyond standard engineering practice. In an attempt to develop students capable of working in a globally distributed design and manufacturing environment, Oregon State University (OSU) and Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Ravensburg (DHBW) have developed a senior...
This thesis investigates the applicability of the finite element method to model wave energy converter (WEC) hydroelasticity using LS-DYNA. The proposed methodology uses the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation to model Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) between the WEC and the fluid elements. This formulation allows for time-domain modeling of higher order effects such...
Innovation can be considered the driving force behind product design. This thesis strives to improve the ease at which innovation is achieved. Firstly by examining how design information is presented and comprehended by various personality types. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test is a quick, easy, and accurate way to determine...
Lean manufacturing, or more generally continuous improvement (CI), has been the methodology behind significant improvements in quality, work in process inventory reductions, lead time reduction and cost reduction while conversely being associated with failed implementations and occasionally with unpopular work practices. This research focused on promoting understanding of CI methodology...
As drop-on-demand (DOD) applications continue to gain ground in desktop inkjet-printing, 3D printing, fluid mixing, and other areas the demand for higher frequency operations are beginning to push against the current physical boundaries in DOD technology. The current research is exploring the possibility of controlling drop volume and velocity at...
This thesis presents a feasibility study of a means to passively effect liquid motion parallel to a heated surface though surface geometrical modifications. Such a passive system is beneficial for electronics cooling applications as it reduces the pumping equipment normally required in flow loops and is desired for space applications,...
Lower production costs are a common goal of many manufacturers as part of their continuous improvement strategies. A large portion of production costs for manufacturers is the machining of metals to form components. Metal machining is accompanied by friction and heat which is dealt with using metalworking fluids such as...
This thesis is the summation of two publications with the motivation to move reliability analysis earlier in the design process. Current analyses aim to improve reliability after components have been selected. Moving specific analyses earlier in the design process reduces the cost to the designer. These early design analyses provide...
Experiments on a novel, microscale hydrogen combustor heat exchanger (µCHX) are presented in this thesis. The µCHX has been designed to efficiently transfer thermal energy to a heat transfer fluid for use in desorption of hydrogen from a metal hydride storage system of a hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle. The experimental...
In the current study a thermally activated cooling system that combines an ORC system with a vapor compression cooling cycle was developed and tested under laboratory conditions. This combined system
can utilize waste heat or other thermal sources such as solar and geothermal to generate power and
cooling. Hot oil...
Heat activated cooling has the potential of utilizing thermal sources that currently go unused such as engine exhaust heat or industrial waste heat. Using these heat sources can provide enhanced energy utilization and reduced fuel usage in applications where cooling is needed. The concept developed here uses waste heat from...
The objective of this research was to provide a definitive description of the processes within the physician-patient encounter in an office setting. This description would take the form of a formal process model of the encounter in a provider's office setting, as this represents the most common situation during patient...
While the locomotion performance of legged robots over flat terrain or known obstacles has improved over the past few decades, they have yet to equal the performance of their animal counterparts over variable terrain. This work analyzes a multi-legged reduced order model of cockroach locomotion on variable slopes which will...
A method was sought to predict the flight paths and collisions for closely spaced ink droplets of various sizes as a design aid for ink-jet printing development. Computational fluid dynamics models of two rigid aligned spheres, as a proxy for ink droplets, were initiated in atmospheric pressure air at constant...
Technologies such as avionics and power electronics are driving the demand for thermal management schemes towards high heat fluxes and low surface temperatures. Typically, these applications require the dissipation of heat fluxes in the rage of 100-1000 W/cm² while maintaining surface temperatures lower than about 85 °C. Phase-change heat transfer...
Rising energy demands and the continual push to find more energy efficient technologies have been the impetus for the investigation of waste heat recovery techniques. Diesel engine exhaust heat utilization has the potential to significantly reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and reduce the release of greenhouse gases, because diesel...
A number of computational tools now exist to aid in developing conceptual solutions based on a functional description of a design problem. A key limitation of these tools is the way results are organized for presentation to the user. In general, results are an undifferentiated mass of potential solutions. Analysis...
Wave energy conversion is still in its infancy, and in order for it to become a commercially viable technology, developers, investors and utilities need to estimate a Wave Energy Converter's (WEC's) performance for the wave climate of a potential installation site. With the goal of estimating a design's power output...
For manufacturing and service industries to stay competitive in this rapidly changing, globalized world, one of the most important operations, and one that many businesses struggle to plan and manage efficiently, is material handling. There has been a large amount of research on various vehicle routing problems (VRPs) in recent...