The team explored new design options for airplane service hatches to reduce the cost of the airplane. They provided a structural analysis for existing and new design options, and created a business case that compares the total manufacturing cost of new design options versus the existing Boeing designs.

While automation of composite laminates is increasing across the aerospace industry, there remains a large sector of composite parts that require hand lamination of prepreg materials. This may be due to complexity of the part, low build rates, or continued build of legacy work. The force and dexterity required to sweep fabric into defined tool features takes its toll on the human body, often causing wrist, elbow, and shoulder discomfort. The student team set out to develop the next step in sweeping technology, with a goal to reduce or eliminate ergonomic exposures while not impeding the ability to manually sweep materials into place. Students developed concepts for sweep designs to alleviate high risk activities, tested and analyzed sweep design concepts, and determined how to accurately detect muscle strain based on the required work.

MOD Pizza is one of the fastest growing chain restaurants with over 250 locations in the US and United Kingdom and over 5000 employees. With growth, they have had to develop more sophisticated programs and processes that are scalable to business needs, with a goal to have the right people in the right place at the right time to deliver the MOD experience to all customers. The student team worked to develop a validated working labor and deployment model that MOD Pizza can implement into labor scheduling software, to be used at all MOD Pizza locations and all store formats.

MOD Pizza is one of the fastest growing chain restaurants with over 250 locations in the US and United Kingdom and over 5000 employees. With growth, they have had to develop more sophisticated programs and processes that are scalable to business needs. Much of the current store designs are driven by the placement of walk-in refrigerator/freezer units, which due to size, limits ability to design the optimal store. The student team worked to deliver a recommendation for refrigerated storage and capacity needs for MOD Pizza locations, and considered the type of equipment needed and delivery frequency of product. The project resulted in a validated business case and recommendation for moving from walk-in refrigeration/freezers to reach-in refrigeration/freezers for all future store locations. The team also developed a tool to determine the number of refrigeration units needed depending on store size and frequency of food deliveries.

Nanostring developed the Digital Spatial Profiling (DSP) platform to make high-throughput measurements of local protein and RNA expression levels within heterogeneous tissue samples. In contrast to the sequential analysis of multi-target immunohistochemistry slides, the DSP platform is paired with Nanostring's optical barcoding technology to sample all analytes on a single slide. The existing benchtop instrument includes imaging and fluidic components to capture spatial context down to single cell resolution, while current nCounter® instruments provide the quantification with a multiplexing capacity of up to 800 targets. The student team developed a proof-of-concept mobile phone based DSP platform for lower resolution applications. The smaller platform, simpler procedure, and much lower cost mobile system could greatly increase access to high-plex quantitative analysis of bio-samples for medical and scientific applications.

The project aims to establish the efficacy of ammonia production by electrolysis of urea in diesel after-treatment. Ammonia needs to be produced in-situ and injected in the exhaust of diesel engines to reduce NOx formed in the engine before it is released to the atmosphere. The student team set out to combine low temperature thermolysis with electrolysis of urea to facilitate the production of effective concentrations of ammonia in the after-treatment system under “cold start” conditions. To achieve this goal, the student team studied the literature on the chemical processes occurring during thermolysis and electrolysis of urea, selecting a set of equations and kinetic rates to model these processes computationally. Then the team designed, built and tested a laboratory loop mimicking the conditions for electrolysis of urea under moderate temperatures (less than 90 C) and injection into the heated gas exhaust (up to 150 C), recovering liquid/solid DEF and deposits and evaluating the concentration of ammonia in the gas stream.

The student team worked to develop a concept for efficient, intuitive, accurate and safe human machine interface for remote operation of an unmanned class 8 truck within the PACCAR Technical Center test track environment. Design requirements included accurate lane control and speed management and back office deployment of human override control for driverless vehicles in unusual situations.

The student team worked to develop wireless software for remote vehicle control of an unmanned class 8 truck within the PACCAR Technical Center track environment. Design requirements included redundant communication channels from vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to infrastructure and infrastructure to vehicle, redundant failsafe link for control of driverless vehicle by a remote operator, data streaming, and two-way communication using a mesh network to maintain communication with moving vehicle and back office. The project resulted in software design and implementation, network architecture within the constraints of the existing modem locations, and demonstration and testing of a high reliability design with redundant communications channels and an optimized network for high data throughput in a mesh layout.

The student team set out to design a method of electronically sensing Angle-of-Attack that is suitable for a medium sized UAS (55-500 pounds). Sensing aircraft Angle-of-Attack is of interest in the field of Unmanned Aerial Systems, specifically at low speeds, for enhancing autonomous landing capability. The team created a feasibility prototype that demonstrates the capability of their designed method.

The TE Connectivity Automation Manufacturing Technology Group located in Harrisburg, PA requires a scheduling system to be developed for its engineering, shop and contract manufacturing resources. The current system is outdated and given the Group’s projected growth it is critical that a new system be established. The current system utilizes spreadsheets and legacy databases to schedule and track materials, costs and resources. The student team set out to understand the business needs of the group and the current methods, and design a feasible, user-friendly scheduling system to be developed and implemented. This system has the ability to schedule materials and organizational resources, track costs, and provide high level and detailed reporting.