Based on experimental investigations the present study evaluates flow instability and
void fraction in a fractal-like branching microchannel network with rectangular cross-section. The hydraulic diameter of the channels ranged from 308μm at the inlet to 143μm at the outlet. The flow network used is characterized by set branching ratios for...
The rising global trend to reduce dependence on fossil fuels has provided significant motivation toward the development of alternative energy conversion methods and new technologies to improve their efficiency. Recently, oscillating energy harvesters have shown promise as highly efficient and scalable turbines, which can be implemented in areas where traditional...
This thesis covers the use of a quarter car model to select damping rates for aFormula Student (FS) car, focusing on minimizing vertical tire force variation to improvegrip. A 2 degree of freedom (DOF) quarter car model is cycled over the road frequenciesof interest and the results compared with the...
Biological organisms, phenomena and strategies, herein referred to as biological systems, provide a rich set of analogies that can be used to inspire engineering innovation. Biologically-inspired, or biomimetic, designs are publicly viewed as creative and novel solutions to human problems. Moreover, some biomimetic designs have become so commonplace that it...
Population counts of aquatic insects can be a credible indicator of the overall health of a waterway. Stonefly (Plecoptera) larva are very sensitive to chemicals present within the waterway, however obtaining population counts of the larvae can be very labor intensive and thus costly. The BugID project has been working...
This thesis explores the development of biomechanical models for evaluating a new class of passive mechanical implants for orthopedic surgery. The proposed implants take the form of passive engineered mechanisms and will be used to improve the functional attachment of muscles to tendons and bone by modifying the transmission of...
In engineering problems not all constraints can be explicitly written as mathematical functions. There needs to be a way integrate designer knowledge into the design process and preferably use that to guide an optimization problem. In this thesis, these constraints are modelled using classification surrogate models and integrated with Bayesian...
Identification and population counts of soil mesofauna can be an
important tool for soil ecologists to determine the soil biodiversity. Information
provided from population counts can give insight to soil ecologists about the
effects of human land use, monitoring soil and water health, benefits of soil
biodiversity in agriculture, and...
Coordinating multiple robots to achieve a complex task requires solving two distinct control problems: the high-level control problem of ensuring that each robot aims to perform a useful task (e.g., coordination) and the low-level control problem of ensuring that each robot actually performs the correct actions to achieve its task...
Wicking action refers to the movement of a liquid through a porous or a structured surface via capillary action. This phenomenon is affected by surface geometry, such as the wick thickness and pore size of the wick, as well as fluid properties, such as viscosity and surface tension of the...