Filters: School Or College:"College of Engineering" Department:"Mechanical Engineering" Publication Type:"thesis" Collection:"ir_etd"
| Title | Author | Subject | Description | Date | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | Thermodynamics of ionizing air | Isaacson, LaVar King | aerodynamics; aerothermodynamics | The development of means of producing high energy flow systems in the last few years has created many flow situations which do not lend themselves to present-day methods and techniques for analysis. The thermodynamic behavior of high temperature flow systems is thus receiving extensive study. Recent... | 1962 |
| 2 |  | Analysis of laminated composites with embedded damping material VIA the singles Lap joint test method | Dixon, Devin P. | Adhesives; analysis; composites; mechanical testing | Composite materials have the distinctive ability to tailor a structure's mechanical properties to achieve a desired result. Because of this capability, composite laminates with embedded damping materials have gained interest as a means to improve the damping characteristics of structures. By constra... | 2018 |
| 3 |  | Development and validation of an instrumented test fixture for vehicle seats in low-speed rear-end collisions | DiNapoli, Ryan M. | This study covered the design, fabrication, and validation of a test fixture designed to measure the mechanical properties of vehicle seat backs. Prior to validation, static testing of four vehicle seats was performed, in part, to acquire a range of stiffness values. Seat backs were loaded with mass... | 2020 | |
| 4 |  | Enabling of the quick urban industrial complex wind model to represent wind turbine flows | Anjewierden, Christopher | While Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS), Large Eddy Simulations (LES), Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes methods (RANS), and others have proven to be reliable methods to simulate flow through a wind farm, they are also computationally expensive. In this work, wind turbine parameterizations are implem... | 2020 | |
| 5 |  | Development of test methods for assessing the environmental durability of adhesively bonded composite joints | Ricsi, David M. | The use of adhesively bonded composite joints is increasing in many industries, including the aerospace industry. As a result, there is increasing interest in using coupon- level testing to assess the performance of adhesives and surface preparation procedures for use in composite bonded joints. Thi... | 2019 | |
| 6 |  | Manufacturing bioinspired flexible hierarchical engineered materials for energy applications through integrating ultrasound directed self-assembly and 3D printing | Wadsworth, Paul Randall | Biological materials that are composed of multiscale hierarchical microstructures embedded in a matrix material typically display different or even enhanced mechanical or material properties compared to an unstructured mixture of the same constituent materials. In this work, ultrasound directed self... | 2019 | |
| 7 |  | Microscale characterization and PLY-Level modeling of transverse fracture in polymer-matrix composites | Smith, Austin Joseph | This thesis describes experimental and numerical research concerning transverse fracture in fiber reinforced polymer matrix composites (PMCs). Transverse fracture is one of the most common and initial types of damage seen in PMCs and is considered a precursor to other more severe damage modes. Under... | 2019 | |
| 8 |  | Manufacturing and experimental characterization of copper-wound super-coiled polymer actuators | Padgett, Matthew Ernest | Super-coiled polymer artificial muscles (SCPs) are a new type of thermally activated linear actuator that exhibit high strain, low hysteresis, and a linear temperaturestrain relationship. They are manufactured by twisting polymer monofilaments, like Nylon 6,6 fishing line, until a tight helical coil... | 2019 | |
| 9 |  | Mode I critical strain energy release rate determination for facesheet-core disbonding of sandwich composites | Braegger, Ryan B. | Standardized tests exist for measuring the Mode I and Mode II interlaminar fracture toughness of unidirectional composite laminates; however, no such standardized tests exist for sandwich composites. Research has determined that the Mode I facesheet-core fracture toughness of a sandwich composite ca... | 2019 | |
| 10 |  | Reexamination of the edge crack torsion test for measuring mode III delamination toughness in tape-laminated composites | Audd, M. Clay | Interlaminar fracture, or delamination, is a common failure mode observed in high-performance tape-laminate fiber-reinforced polymeric (FRP) composites used by the aerospace industry. Typically, initiation or growth of delaminations in FRPs occurs due to mode I (opening), mode II (in-plane shearing)... | 2019 | |
| 11 |  | Evaluating the effectiveness of compliant flooring surfaces during simulated fall impacts | Leddige, Nathan Quinn | Falls and injuries related to falls are a prevalent safety concern in high fall risk sites such as hospitals and nursing homes. Injuries occurring from a fall can lead to complications, including increased length of hospital stay, increased cost, and even death. This study aims to investigate how a ... | 2019 | |
| 12 |  | The role of buildings in a changing environmental ERA: a modeling approach to quantifying and reducing missions | Plewe, Kaden Ezra | As the scientific community continues to make predictions about the implications of a changing climate within our social and material infrastructures, the call for solutions that mitigate these implications is becoming more urgent than ever before. Responsible for a large portion of the energy deman... | 2019 | |
| 13 |  | Assembly sequence planning by subassembly decomposition using blocking reduction | Watson, James R. | Assembly; efficient; manufacturing; parallel; planning; subassembly | We present a disassembly sequence planner that partitions assemblies in a way that prioritizes access to parts, resulting in plans that are efficient to execute. Our main contribution is an expression of obstruction relationships between parts as a disassembly interference graph (DIG). Using this gr... | 2019 |
| 14 |  | Hygroscopic swelling for 4D-fabrication of ionic polymermetal composite soft-Robotic Devices | Tyler, Thomas R. | This thesis focuses on exploring a hygroscopically-induced 4D-manufacturing method for the fabrication of complex, 3-dimensional (3D), multimaterial, and monolithic ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) actuators for applications in soft robotics. IPMCs are composed of an ion exchange polymer (ionome... | 2019 | |
| 15 |  | Investigation of the effect of hole edge margin on fatigue life of cold expanded holes with existing cracks in 2024-T351 aluminum alloy | Ross, Evan Michael | Damage tolerance analysis is used by the United States Air Force to maintain the airworthiness of its aircraft through inspection, fatigue crack growth prediction, and residual strength analysis. Cold expansion is commonly used to impart compressive residual stress around fastener holes to slow the ... | 2019 | |
| 16 |  | On the sem-based full-field measurement using grid-method for material characterization | Mirmohammad, Seyedhadi | In order to continue to improve understanding of the mechanisms which govern plastic deformation such as dislocation slip and twinning, new experimental techniques capable of resolving full-field displacement and strain maps at reduced length-scales are needed. The work outlined in this thesis is di... | 2019 | |
| 17 |  | Design of an indium arsenide cell for near-field thermophotovoltaic devices | Milovich, Daniel Steven | Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) power generators convert infrared photons from a terrestrial source into electricity and consist of a high-temperature radiator and a low bandgap photovoltaic (PV) cell separated by a vacuum gap. To potentially improve TPV performance, near-field TPV (NF-TPV) devices have be... | 2019 | |
| 18 |  | Improving convective cooling estimates of photovoltaic modules using atmospheric measurements | Eng, Byron Kasey | Photovoltaic (PV) module efficiency is inversely proportional to temperature. Therefore, module temperature must be accurately modeled when assessing module performance. Convective cooling is a complicated process which is often overly simplified in thermal models, leading to inaccuracies. Current m... | 2019 | |
| 19 |  | Characterization and evaluation of a passive three-segment foot | Christian, Kyle Lynn | foot; gait; multisegment foot; ankle-foot simulator | The Ankle-Foot Simulator (AFS) developed at the University of Utah currently uses a single segment foot model to reproduce gait trajectories. This foot design limits the AFS performance and introduces errors while reproducing gait trajectories. These limitations affect the ability to study footwear,... | 2019 |
| 20 |  | Microstructural characterization of a large selective laser melted inconel 718 build volume | Chanut, Raphael A. | Additive manufacturing (AM) can produce complex 3D structures that are not obtainable through conventional subtractive machining process. However, AM processing has been shown to create spatially varying microstructures not seen in wrought materials; therefore, the investigation of how microstructur... | 2019 | |
| 21 |  | Determination of the batch quality of a glass-microsphere syntactic polyurethane foam using the shear punch test | Callaway, John Ryan | Syntactic foams are a low-density composite material that are used in a wide range of industries. Wide usage of these foams in industry is due to the ability to customize their mechanical, thermal, acoustic, and electrical properties. As new foams are developed, it is important to develop a mechanic... | 2019 | |
| 22 |  | Mode II fracture toughness of sandwich composites using the separated end notched flexure test method | Bluth, Zachary D. | The rise in popularity of sandwich composites has created a demand for methods to properly characterize their fracture behavior. This research builds upon previous development of the Separated End-Notched Flexure (S-ENF) test, a proposed test configuration for characterization of Mode II critical en... | 2019 | |
| 23 |  | Human response to slip while grasping brittle objects | Zakri, Muhammad Saiful Azmi | Both the human hand and current 1-DOF prosthetic hands, such as the Ottobock SensorHand Speed hand, prevent slip while grasping objects by increasing the grip force. The question is what is the appropriate amount of grip force to apply to the object to recover from slip. A slow response with insuffi... | 2018 | |
| 24 |  | Investigation of near-field radiation-mediated photonic thermal diodes: from theory to experiment | Tang, Lei | A photonic thermal diode is a two-terminal device in which the magnitude of the heat transfer is significantly different depending on the direction of the temperature bias. Near-field radiation-mediated photonic thermal diodes not only allow the direction of heat transfer to be rectified, but also m... | 2018 | |
| 25 |  | A comparison of magnetoelectric trandsucer designs for use as wireless magnetic power receivers in biomedical implant applications | Rupp, Tyrel Christian | Mechanical Engineering; Design; Biomedical Engineering | Inherent in the nature of medical implant designs is the need to minimize their size and subsequent impact to their environment of use. Recently, many of the mechanisms used in implants have been constructed on the micro and even nano scales; however, powering these devices still remains a challenge... | 2018 |