As the negative impacts of a fossil fueled electricity market are becoming more prevalent and destructive, the necessity for alternative energy techniques increases as well. However, before commercial implementation is underway, these alternatives must be assessed from three important perspectives: environmentally, economically, and socially, which are known as the three...
Powder Metallurgy Hot Isostatic Pressing (PM-HIP) is a widely recognized powder metallurgy manufacturing process to produce near-net-shape and net-shape components. During general PM-HIP processes the metal powders are filled within a capsule (die), heated and loaded with high pressure simultaneously, and solidified to form the final product. Due to the...
Creating schedules for the job shop manufacturing system is an extremely difficult task. Although researchers have devoted a lot of attention to generating optimal solutions, these solutions are static, thus they do not update as random events occur that disrupt the system. As smart manufacturing has grown, researchers have been...
Improving the quality of the medical system has always been of great importance but has not always made the largest advances. A significant percentage of medical errors are due to wrong, missed, or delayed medical diagnosis. Diagnostic errors are among the most preventable categories of medical errors, but when an...
A new material system was developed for fabricating the combustion engine of an unmanned aerial vehicle. The material system consisted of a mixture of nanoscale and microscale particles of silicon nitride. Magnesia and yttria were used as sintering additives. The powders were mixed with a paraffin binder system. The binder-powder...
A significant barrier to the diffusion bonding of large (i.e. 600 mm) microchannel devices is the large capital investment required to setup production. This large capital investment extends from long heating and cooling cycles leading to poor production
capacities. Empirical studies in industry have shown that cooling rate is limited...
The marked increase in surface-to-volume ratio associated with microscale devices for hemodialysis leads to problems with hemocompatibility and blood flow distribution that are more challenging to manage than those encountered at the conventional scale. In this work, stable surface modifications with pendant polyethylene oxide (PEO) chains were produced on polycarbonate...
Poor material utilization is inherent to conventional manufacturing processes, leading to high material waste and machining times. Additive manufacturing processes attempt to solve this issue by allowing production of near-net shapes, but the processes may be too expensive or infeasible. By leveraging both processes in a single part, the waste...
The goal of this paper is to evaluate how synthetic lubricants perform in an enclosed gearbox application when compared with a proven mineral oil. This is in an effort to improve gearbox efficiency with the desired effect of lower emissions from of improved energy output from power generation. Four liquid...
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems represent nearly half of building energy usage in the United States. Recent building regulations requiring increased air turnover within buildings will result in even greater air conditioning usage. To alleviate these concerns, membrane-based heat-and-moisture exchangers known as energy recovery ventilators have been developed to...