With the continued decrease in size and subsequent increase in power of computer processors, thermal management in electronics is becoming more important than ever before. The chip heat densities are reaching new peaks (> 100 W cm-2) that current cooling methods are not able to keep up with. However, some...
Waste-heat-recovery Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) systems use excess heat from industrial processes to produce electrical power. In many cases, the temperatures and mass flow rates of these excess-heat streams vary significantly over time, causing the ORC to often operate far from its design point. In this study, a control strategy...
Gas turbine engines for propulsion applications can use fuel as a coolant, exposing the fuel to high temperatures well within the ranges associated with thermal decomposition. Species produced as a result of these processes have been shown to correlate with changes in the combustion performance of the fuels. In this...
The US industrial sector accounts for about one-third of the nation’s energy consumption and is predicted to grow twice as quickly as other sectors through 2050. International organizations such as the International Energy Agency project energy efficiency improvements will account for over 40% of greenhouse gas emissions reductions through 2040....
Between Oregon State University and DHBW Ravensberg, Global Formula Racing produces two Formula style vehicles every year for competition. This thesis has served as a pre-development project in the ergonomics and driver interface of the team's vehicles. This project will determine the position of the seat back, steering wheel, and...
An experimental framework for investigation of the effects of Micro Pin Fin Arrays (MPFA) on the fuel oxidation efficiency of catalytic combustion is presented in this thesis. Complete combustion of the fuel is essential for operation at maximum efficiency and high standards of environmental cleanliness desired in existing microscale combustion...
The High Altitude Liquid Engine (HALE) team is developing of a 2000 lbf thrust liquid propellant engine for a flight vehicle capable of breaching the Karman Line (100 km in altitude). As part the development of this flight vehicle, this research focuses on the design and characterization of a novel...
The ATRIAS agile humanoid robot, along with a number of other spring-mass walking
machines, currently have two instabilities: one resulting from inertial forces on the torso
which cause the robot to spin like a top, and another resulting from stiff ground collisions
which cause chattering of the point-contact toes. This...
Computation of offset curves is an operation critical to many computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) applications. Though simple on the surface, differences between the straightforward mathematical definition and the demands of CAD/CAM environment in the formulation and expression of an offset curve create a problem for which only complicated, approximate...
The Oregon State University chapter of American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics competed in the Design/Build/Fly competition for the second time during the 2013/2014 school year. This chapter began at Oregon State in 2012 and still lacks an organized management system for the Design/Build/Fly team that could allow OSU to...