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2018/2019 Mechanical Engineering Industry-Sponsored Student Capstone Projects

Boeing

Powder Bed Fusion Seed Build

Sponsor:
Project Name:
Powder Bed Fusion Seed Build
Students:
Ryan Chin
Hayrullah Kaan Fero
Zach Inoue
Hannah Lee
Alexander Montelione
Lyubomir Sukoparov
Jullio Tchouta
Faculty Adviser:
Dwayne Arola, Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Ramulu Mamidala, Boeing-Pennell Endowed Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

Powder bed fusion (PBF) technology has the capability to create complex shapes and features that are hard or impossible to machine with existing technology. PBF technology is currently expensive, and requires post processing to achieve acceptable surface finishes; it is therefore desirable to create a method to add features to existing parts or seed shapes using PBF without the need to create the entire part using PBF. The student team worked to create a process and plan for adding features to a seed part using the ARCAM Laser powder bed fusion machine.

A group of students

Boeing

Single Piece Composite Wheels

Sponsor:
Project Name:
Single Piece Composite Wheels
Students:
Christopher Dymek
Ashley Huynh
Conor Lanning
Faculty Adviser:
Ashley Emery, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

An airplane wheel is responsible for transmitting all vehicle forces to the ground and is a safety-critical stressed airplane component. Because the wheel is a fast-spinning component subject to frequent and rapid changes in rotational speed minimizing mass is a high priority. The student team worked to design a monolithic, composite vehicle wheel accounting for weight, stiffness, safety and reliability that can be used on their Formula SAE car.

Genie

Product Decal Selection and Application Improvement

Sponsor:
Project Name:
Product Decal Selection and Application Improvement
Students:
Christian Bertram
Jeffrey Jacobsen
Faculty Adviser:
Santosh Devasia, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

Genie is constantly working towards building quality in its production processes. One desired areas of improvement is decals selection (material delivery) and decal application accuracy on Genie units. The student team was tasked with analyzing the current state of the decal delivery and application process and subsequently identifying areas of improvement, including material flow, process design, work station layout/design, and equipment changes. The goal of the team’s solution is to mistake-proof the process of decal delivery to the point of use and also eliminate the possibility of error in the decal application process.

Kenworth

Multibody Dynamic Model of a Front Suspension and Steering System for a Twin Steer Axle Heavy Duty Truck

Sponsor:
Project Name:
Multibody Dynamic Model of a Front Suspension and Steering System for a Twin Steer Axle Heavy Duty Truck
Students:
Khrisna Kamarga
Tsung Da Kuo
Yanming Li
Jing Lu
Logan McCallum
Mojun Pan
Kaiyu Shi
Li-Wei Shih
Storrie Skalisky
Collin Rhodes
Shunsuke Winston
Zi Ye
Faculty Adviser:
Brian Fabien, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

In order to achieve good weight distribution and maneuverability within a fixed vehicle length two steering axles can be used instead of a single steer axle. Doing so adds complexity to the design since many components need to be connected with linkages in order to coordinate steering angles of the tires as well as proper load transfer between the first and second axle. The student team worked to create a simulation model of the front suspension and steering system that predicts the motion of the system through the expected range of travel and is capable of estimating loads while undergoing durability events.

McKinstry

Unlocking Data in the Built Environment

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Sponsor:
Project Name:
Unlocking Data in the Built Environment
Students:
Ibrahem Adem
Ben LaRoche
Aman Michael
Claire Overby
Tianyi Wang
Faculty Adviser:
Ashis Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Patty Buchanan, Lecturer, Industrial & Systems Engineering
About the Project:

McKinstry has a desire to better utilize data in the built environment to effect behavior. The student team was tasked with capturing, assessing, and analyzing large amounts of building data to identify trends and deliver recommendations on what occupants and operators should be doing differently to positively impact resource consumption in the built environment.

Microsoft

Robotic Eyes

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Sponsor:
Project Name:
Robotic Eyes
Students:
Karli Berger
Connor Hughes
Khrisna Kamarga
Kyle Schultz
Kaiyu Shi
Li-Wei Shih
Faculty Adviser:
Santosh Devasia, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

Eye trackers are slowly becoming mainstream devices and finding uses in accessibility scenarios, education, entertainment and productivity. But it is hard to automate testing of applications that are written to work with eye trackers because the eye trackers require a human to be present. It is also hard to replicate a test or an experiment because human eyes don't follow the exact same paths every time. The student team worked to build a test-rig and software to control the rig that can automate testing. The test rig consists of a pair of prosthetic eyes capable of rotating horizontally and vertically that are realistic enough to fool an eye tracker that it is human. The software can accept a set of screen coordinates as input and then move the eyes in such a way that the eye tracker returns that point as the gaze coordinate.

PACCAR

Analyzing Warranty Claims Using Machine Learning

Sponsor:
Project Name:
Analyzing Warranty Claims Using Machine Learning
Students:
Anyi Chen
Wenwen Liu
Vidur Vij
Qiran Wu
Tianhao Xu
Murphy Zhang
Faculty Adviser:
Ashis Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Industrial & Systems Engineering and Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

The PACCAR Technical Center Advanced Analytics team groups warranty claims into potential product quality projects. The product quality projects are used to improve product design, resolve defects, and increase customer satisfaction. The claims are also used to help prioritize projects using metrics such as Cost per Truck, Total Cost, Failure per 100, Truck Population Impacted, etc. The student team was tasked with creating a machine learning tool to help speed up the identification of highest impact issues and help with the prioritization of projects.

PACCAR

Haptics Evaluation

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Sponsor:
Project Name:
Haptics Evaluation
Students:
Christopher Harrison
Aaron Kitchener
Faculty Adviser:
Santosh Devasia, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

PACCAR has a desire to Develop and optimize haptic feedback for cab interior controls using subjective and objective methods. The company currently relies on different suppliers to tune haptics of various controls and there is a need to develop appropriate guidelines for various types of manual controls. The student team worked to optimize haptics using user feedback and mechanical apparatuses to measure feedback force characteristics. They developed preliminary apparatuses to measure force feedback for different types of controls and generated force displacement curves.

PACCAR

Lidar Localization on the Road with Limited Landmarks

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Sponsor:
Project Name:
Lidar Localization on the Road with Limited Landmarks
Students:
Russell DeGuzman
Everett Key
Daniel Torres
Xingjian Yang
Faculty Adviser:
Ashis Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Industrial & Systems Engineering and Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

A key component of autonomous vehicle operation is the ability for the vehicle control system to locate its current position on a high definition map. This localization is required in order to insulate path planning from the instantaneous information presented by the vehicle perception system. This is necessary to provide redundancy in case of a temporary or unexpected loss of perception as well as to decouple the performance of the vehicle controls from the latency of the perception system. The student team was tasked with evaluating techniques that would be suitable for use on a commercial vehicle operating on roads under sparse availability of easily identified landmarks.

PACCAR

Tube-in-Shell Diesel After-Treatment System

Sponsor:
Project Name:
Tube-in-Shell Diesel After-Treatment System
Students:
Amanda Johnson
Kuotian (Tim) Liao
Callan McLeod
Nana Yamagata
Faculty Adviser:
John Kramlich, Associate Chair for Academics and Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Junlan Wang, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

Emission regulations for diesel truck engines are becoming increasingly stringent. This is particularly true for nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are controlled by an aftertreatment catalyst system. Catalyst performance depends on keeping the catalyst temperature at the optimal point, which requires quick initial heatup and careful control of temperature excursions during the drive cycle. PACCAR has proposed a unique tube-in-shell heat exchanger design to address these challenges. The student team worked on two proposed design features: (1) use of thermal barrier coatings to improve heat retention and (2) use of guided fins to enhance the internal heat transfer between the engine gas and catalyst body. The thermal barrier coating (TBC) sub-team investigated the TBC effectiveness by analyzing the microstructural and mechanical integrity of the coatings. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) sub-team used ANSYS Fluent to explore and optimize how various fin geometries worked to improve heat transfer and reduce pressure drop inside the system. Both these approaches appear to have sufficiently good benefits and low costs such that they are candidates for further development.

Seattle City Light

Food Service Electrification

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Project Name:
Food Service Electrification
Students:
Cole Burge
Jacob Fink
Joanna Garcia
Nahom Ghirmay
Ivan Iturriaga
Matthew Kim
Ladat Pattaraarayakul
Robert Pedersen
Xiange Wang
Faculty Adviser:
Patty Buchanan, Lecturer, Industrial & Systems Engineering
Joyce Cooper, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

The City of Seattle has goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As part of this initiative, Seattle City Light is investigating the potential for all-electric renewable energy powered food trucks for use on Seattle streets that have all-electric appliances and no need for propane or gas. In addition to reducing greenhouse gases, improving the viability and operation of food trucks from an environmental perspective addresses issues related to equity. The student team was tasked with demonstrating how to layout, design and build a food truck kitchen using all-electric appliances and renewable energy that satisfies the typical needs of the majority of food trucks used in the Seattle area. They also worked on mapping out the steps to retrofit an existing food truck to all electric appliances, taking into account cost considerations of the retrofit. Finally, the team worked to layout an electric food truck plaza.

 

Vesicus

Feasibility of Converting Recycled Flake from PET Bottles to Lightweight Bricks for Construction

Sponsor:
Vesicus
Project Name:
Feasibility of Converting Recycled Flake from PET Bottles to Lightweight Bricks for Construction
Students:
Yichen Zhang
Haoyang Zhou
Faculty Adviser:
Vipin Kumar, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
About the Project:

PET is the most abundantly recycled polymer. Many companies collect recycled PET bottles of various shapes and colors, and crush them into PET flake. Currently this flake is simply burned to recover some energy from it. Vesicus charged their student team with exploring the potential to foam the flake using the company’s microcellular technology, and then develop a useful product from it. The ideal product is a lightweight brick made of foamed flake or foamed flake mixed with concrete for potential use in the construction industry.