Bipedal locomotion is a complex phenomenon to understand and control, making it difficult for legged robots to achieve the speed, agility, efficiency, and robustness of their animal counterparts. This thesis argues for the use of numerical optimization to investigate and implement bipedal control as it applies to biology, dynamical models,...
Formula SAE is a collegiate engineering competition that has participants from around the globe. Of the 1000 points available throughout the event, 100 (10%) are dedicated to the fuel efficiency of the student built race cars. Competition rules allow either gasoline or E85, a mix of 85% ethanol and 15%...
The objective of this study is to propose control strategies for legged robots to walk and run naturally like humans and animals. To achieve this goal, we use the spring-mass model for the legged robots to be able to create the same dynamics in the leg as humans and animals....
Cutting operations using blades appear in several different industries such as food processing, surgical operations, gardening equipment, and so forth. As our society continues to increase our technological prowess, there is an ongoing need to better understand the underlying causes of simple tasks such as cutting so that cutting operations...
Digital Image Correlation(DIC) is one of full-field strain measurement techniques devel- oped in recent decades, which has been well-demonstrated to conduct the mechanical properties study of solid materials, by collecting data using digital cameras. X-ray to- mography(CT) imaging helps the correlation techniques expanded to three dimensional investigation of materials, known...
Steel foundries are in great need of automation as current operations involve many hazardous manual tasks. Automating foundry operations is very challenging due to the variety of tasks that must be performed on physical objects that vary significantly in size, shape, and weight. This thesis focuses on robotically automating the...
Given the current abundant supply and cheap price of natural gas (NG) in the United States, there is a significant opportunity to use this fuel for transportation. However, there are few fueling stations for consumers. To address this need, a dual-mode engine has been developed where in one mode all...
This thesis discusses the design of several microchannel solar receiver devices for use in CSP (concentrated solar power) using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations. The goal is to demonstrate that, by taking advantage of the higher heat transfer coefficienct of microchannels, solar receivers can achieve higher efficiency than current receiver...
The ability to engineer stiffness and strength in any desired direction make composites an ideal material candidate for various applications when compared to their traditional isotropic counterparts. In spite of this, the ability to model the material response in composites has yet to be fully explored. Composite research largely focuses...
The ability to develop mobile applications for smartphones and tablets is an increasingly valuable skill in today’s labor market. This thesis details the development of the mobile application Drone Drop from beginning to finish. I first describe the background research conducted to learn about programming languages and other tools used...
As modern systems continue to increase in size and complexity, they pose significant safety and risk management challenges. System engineers and much of the government research efforts are focused on understanding the attributes and characteristics that emerge from the interactions of components and subsystems. As a result, the objective of...
Wave energy holds great promise to be part of the alternative energy portfolio that will provide independence from fossil fuels. As wave energy converter (WEC) technologies mature, designing effective control strategies to extract maximum energy, extend device life, coordinate WEC operation within an array, or mitigate negative impacts of a...
The reliability and survivability of a wave energy converter (WEC) is highly dependent on the variability and non-linearity of the ocean itself. Ocean variability occurs on many time scales. Climate variability occurs decade-to-decade, and year-to-year in the number and intensity of winter storms. Seasonal variation of wave height and period...
A microchannel-based hemodialyzer offers a novel approach to hemodialysis practice and holds many promises for improving dialysis treatment efficiency and quality of life for kidney patients. The hollow fiber hemodialyzer, a conventional dialysis device, has certain limitations including non-uniformity of the dialysate flow path which necessitates the use of a...
Manuscript I: The removal of residual casting material from gating has traditionally been performed by abrasive grinding techniques. However, high amounts of belt wear can occur when working with high strength alloys, especially those typically seen in the aerospace industry. An alternative machining process called electrochemical machining (ECM) uses electrolysis...
There is a pressing need for Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) that are light, powerful, and efficient to perform military reconnaissance missions and search and rescue operations. These MAVs have length scales on the order of 10 cm, where traditional steady flight wing designs perform poorly. An alternative flight mechanism is...
Bipedal robots represent a unique class of control problems that combine many of the most difficult elements of nonlinear control. These robots are typically designed to be mobile and as such have limited energy and actuator authority making efficiency a prime concern. Unlike wheeled robots, legged robots must transition between...
This thesis is the combination of two research publications working toward a unified strategy in which to represent complex engineered systems as complex networks. Current engineered system modeling techniques segment large complex models into multiple groups to be simulated independently. These methods restrict the evaluations of such complex systems as...
The expansion of a gas within a piston-cylinder arrangement is studied in order to obtain a better understanding of the heat transfer which occurs during this process. While the situation of heat transfer during the expansion of a gas has received considerable attention, the process is still not very well...
As the growth in demand for sustainable manufacturing continues, companies must begin to make conscious design decisions with regard to the sustainability of their products. This means balancing economics of production with environmental and social performance. Thus, design and manufacturing engineers must consider economic, environmental, and social aspects simultaneously when...