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Automated Expanding Christmas Tree
Get PDFThe Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo (SLO) needs a new expanding Christmas tree for their 2024 production of The Nutcracker. This Final Design Review Report outlines pertinent information regarding the Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering Senior Project of Team F14 (“D.R.E.I.D.E.L.S.”), who was tasked of designing and building the new expanding Christmas tree frame. Our team’s name, “D.R.E.I.D.E.L.S.,” stands for Design and Research of Expansion Integrated Dramaturgy Ergonomic Leveraging Systems. We thought this would be a fun, creative, and ironic name for our team.
In this report, our team will discuss how we procured the materials required and manufactured and assembled our design. Furthermore, it will detail the results found from the test procedures and inspections from our Design Verification Plan in Appendix D. These results helped us understand the strength and physics of the structure, the ergonomics and transportability of the design, and necessary constraints such as expansion time and low noise level
Lessons from a First Year Seminar: Teaching “Mean Girls” to Become “Nasty Women”
Get PDFThis essay explores what happened in a First Year Seminar on Nasty Women in American Literature when a group of students, instead of embracing the strength and independence that the phrase nasty woman came to embody, turned into a group of mean girls --led by a queen bee --and dominated the course through alliance-building, gossip, and distraction. The Suffolk University English professor teaching the course explains the challenging environment that ensured and what she learned from the experience, enabling her to make important changes in her teaching of the course the following semester
Student Center Building
Get PDFThe new Student Center (SC) is planned as a 140,000 GSF four (4) story building with a basement. The program for the building includes classrooms, an auditorium, fabrication & assembly, glass blowing, student organizations that build & test vehicles, meeting rooms, demonstration kitchen, café, retail, and a lounge. An exterior courtyard is planned on Level 2 which allows for outdoor assembly spaces.
This report identifies major code requirements for means of egress, structural fire protection, fire suppression, and fire alarm systems. The report also identifies the major fuel loads in the building. A performance-based assessment is provided for roof construction fire protection. An equivalency approach is also provided for the potential building atrium condition.
The Type IIA building will contain Group A, B, F-1, S-1, and M occupancies and will be fully sprinkler protected and provided with an emergency voice/alarm communication system. Consideration should be given to build the project to Type IB construction due to the presence of 2-hour shafts and Level 1 being a 2-hour floor assembly.
The project contains two (2) floor openings that connect Level B to Level 1; and Level 1 to Level 2. Prescriptive code requires these floor openings to be fire separated.
The project contains three (3) exit stairs serving all levels above grade. Level 2 is also served by an open exit access stair located in the Level 2 floor opening. Level B is served by two (2) exit stairs and an open exit access stair located in the Level 1 floor opening. At Level 2, a stair (Stair A) has been permitted to have a rolling fire shutter complete its enclosure (equipped with an integral egress door).
The sprinkler system design does not require a fire pump. The sprinkler system design includes provisions to convert the Paint Lab from using water-based paints to flammable liquid-based paints. This future use will either impact the sprinkler design (increased riser size from 4” to 5”) or will require the rating of the room to be increased from 1-hour to 1.5-hour.
As noted above, the fire alarm system will be an emergency voice/alarm communication system with a Notifier NFC-50/100(E) fire alarm control panel. Achieving intelligibility will require a speaker in most rooms.
Calculations were performed to determine whether protecting the steel roof structure is necessary. 50mm of spray mineral fiber was shown to adequately protect analyzed structural members. Based on the results of the fire scenarios, the thickness of spray mineral fiber may be reduced to achieve a similar level of protection at a lower cost. Fire Scenario 3 did not require spray fireproofing, suggesting that some ancillary rooms similar to the multi-purpose room may not require fireproofing.
Smoke control is not required for the project; however, as requested by the AOR (architect of record), the fire separation between the two (2) project floor openings was requested to be removed. An equivalency was prepared based on two (2) design fires. Smoke control was found to be necessary to maintain tenable conditions. The smoke control system must be capable of operating for the specified total building RSET (51 minutes). The system must be equipped with primary and secondary power. It is recommended that the secondary power be achieved with an unlimited power supply to ensure the smoke control system is not interrupted by loss of power, to maintain tenable conditions.
The equivalency approach explores removing the fire separation between the project floor openings, which connects three (3) levels atmospherically. Since the Code permits two-story openings with no smoke control, the focus of the approach is smoke spread from Level B to Level 2. Also, since Stair A discharges to the interior of the building, the other focus of the approach is to maintain tenable conditions at Stair A’s discharge.
The design fires are based a t-squared fire model. The selected alpha value is for Polyfoam (rigid polyurethane) and is the worst-case value reported by the referenced document. Realistically, the test samples were small in the referenced document so a realistic fire should have a lesser growth rate factor.
Using the worst-case value ensures the equivalency approach is valid for a worst-case scenario (such as a vertical flame spread or a new novel material).
There are two (2) design fires, a fire based on a significant mass of Polyfoam being stored in a room (Composites Lab) (Design Fire 1) and 10 kg of Polyfoam stored directly at the base of the Level 1 floor opening (such that virtually all smoke rises to the level above) (Design Fire 2). The latter design fire assumes the 10 kg of Polyfoam is fully combusted with other combustibles (assumed to be cellulosic materials, red oak) continuing the fire.
Tenability for the design fires is assessed at Level 2, directly around the Level 2 floor opening, and at Level 1 at the Stair A discharge. The main criterion is maintaining the smoke layer height above 7.5 ft at these locations. Also, visibility (5 m) and temperature (60 C) are also included as tenability criteria. Tenability is also assessed for Stair E, the exit access stair located in the Level 2 floor opening, connecting Level 2 to Level 1.
Neither design fire maintained tenable conditions for the Stair A discharge.
Design Fire 1 passed the other specified criteria with approximately 133,000 CFM and smoke control activation at 92.5 seconds (detection time + alarm activation time).
Design Fire 2A did not pass the other specified criteria using the same exhaust airflow and exhaust system activation time as Design Fire 1.
Design Fire 2B added beam detection at 3 m above the Level 1 floor opening to detect the fire in approximately 10 seconds. Design Fire 2B did not pass the other specified criteria using the same exhaust airflow and a new exhaust system activation time of 20 seconds (detection time + system activation time).
Design Fire 2C retained the beam detection approach and modified the sprinkler spacing above the Level 1 floor opening to 6 ft to reduce the design fire size as well as increased the exhaust airflow rate. Design Fire 2C passed the other specified criteria with approximately 300,000 CFM and smoke control activation at 20 seconds (detection time + system activation time).
Therefore, the equivalency approach requires the following:
1) 300,000 CFM of mechanical exhaust at the Level 2 roof (Design Fire 2C)---Alternatively, close off the area below the Level 1 floor opening such that combustibles cannot be located in the floor opening and reduce to 133,000 CFM (Design Fire 1). 2) Beam detection above the Level 1 floor opening (not more than 9 ft AFF)---If the above alternative approach is taken, provide beam detection as a factor of safety. 3) Tight sprinkler spacing (6 ft) above the Level 1 floor opening (not required for alternate approach). 4) Primary and secondary power for the exhaust system. Secondary power should be an unlimited power supply (UPS) to ensure no disruption in smoke exhaust. 51 minutes of power supply based on the estimated time to evacuate the building. 5) Provide a Firefighter’s smoke control panel at the fire alarm annunciator (FAA) at the main entrance. 6) Enclose the Level B main electrical room with 1-hour construction since it contains the fire alarm control panel (FACP). The UPS and secondary power supply should be located in this room, another at least 1-hour rated room, or outdoors. The room is currently 2-hour rated. 7) Modify the Stair A discharge by protecting it with smoke-tight construction or relocate the discharge from Exit 5 to Exit 4
Controls and Autonomy Research Testbed (C.A.R.T.)
Get PDFOur team, Controls and Autonomy Research Testbed (CART) team modified and built upon the work of the Battery-Powered Autonomous Cart conversiON (BACON) senior project. BACON was the project before ours, with the goal of developing an autonomous vehicle platform for use as a test platform by the Mechanical Engineering department at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). The project\u27s scope included a redesign of the braking and steering systems, a ground-up design of the e-stop and acceleration systems, and integration with an embedded controller. This project was proposed by Professor Birdsong, who desires a platform for autonomous vehicle control system testing, which faculty and graduate researchers can use to test their control systems and algorithms.
The final design review serves to document all the progress made on the project henceforth. A summary of the design and design modifications are included. The manufacturing steps are documented. With a completed and manufactured design, testing was performed on the steering system, wheel speed sensors, and braking system. Finally, a reflection of the project included along with recommendations for future advancements to the project
Robot Rodeo
Get PDFThis document outlines the Final Design Review (FDR) for an autonomous robot developed in response to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Ship Maintenance Robot Rodeo Challenge. Through extensive analysis, we selected a design concept, built a verification prototype, and tested the prototype in the NSWC Robot Rodeo Competition. The design overview portion of this report will present the details of our design while explaining how it will function. Next, is our implementation section, which provides evidence about our procurement, manufacturing, and assembly of our product. Our design verification follows and explains the tests that we conducted on the robot and the results that we obtained. The final section is our discussion and recommendations which is written to help a future team if they were to pick up the project in future years. Overall, this document demonstrates our team’s dedication to advancing technology for effective, cost-efficient, and safe naval ship maintenance
ASME Electric-Human Powered Vehicle (eHPV) Project
Get PDFThis report documents the collaborative efforts of the senior design team and the Cal Poly Human Powered Vehicles Club in creating an electric-assisted human powered vehicle tailored for participation in ASME\u27s e-HPV Spring 2024 competition. Delving into a comprehensive account of the project\u27s lifecycle, the report outlines the iterative stages of ideation and design, the manufacturing processes, testing , and subsequent refinements undertaken by the team. Additionally, it provides analysis of the project management strategies employed, as well as an overall appraisal of successes, setbacks, and areas improvement. As a result of the project, the vehicle (shown below) was successfully manufactured and met all testing requirements. As of finalizing this report, the vehicle will be taken to the ASME e-HPV competition in April as planned
KGScore-Open: Leveraging Knowledge Graph Semantics For Open-QA Evaluation
Get PDFEvaluating active Question Answering (QA) systems, as users ask questions outside of the original testing data, has proven to be difficult, due to the difficulty of gauging answer quality without ground truth responses. We propose KGScore-Open, a configurable system capable of scoring questions and answers in Open Domain Question Answering (Open-QA) without ground truth answers present by leveraging DBPedia, a Knowledge Graph (KG) derived from Wikipedia, to score question-answer pairs. The system maps entities from questions and answers to DBPedia nodes, constructs a Knowledge Graph based on these entities, and calculates a relatedness score. Our system is validated on multiple datasets, achieving up to 83% accuracy in differentiating relevant from irrelevant answers in the Natural Questions dataset, 55% accuracy in classifying correct versus incorrect answers (hallucinations) in the TruthfulQA and HaluEval datasets, and 54% accuracy on the QA-Eval task using the EVOUNA dataset. The contributions of this work include a novel scoring system for indicating both relevancy and answer confidence in Open-QA without the need for ground truth answers, demonstrated efficacy across various tasks, and an extendable framework applicable to different KGs for evaluating QA systems of other domains
Modeling, Simulation, And Experimental Testing Of A Single-Legged Hopper
No full textLegged robots are well-suited for navigating unstructured terrain due to their ability to perform agile dynamic motions. Building on the efforts of Cal Poly\u27s Legged Robotics Group, this project focuses on achieving stable forward hopping with a single legged robot.
A comprehensive model of leg hopping is formulated, with leg dynamics during flight and stance phases derived using Euler-Lagrange equations. During the stance phase, a spring-mass system models the leg-ground interaction. The touchdown and lift-off conditions are formulated mathematically, and state mappings between phases are determined via momentum conservation. A two-phase hybrid controller is designed, incorporating trajectory planning during flight and ground-reaction force and impedance control during stance. Numerical simulations validate the design, followed by experimental testing on a Speedgoat real-time machine within a Simulink environment, showing good correlation with simulations. The impact of a control parameters on average velocity are experimentally analyzed.
The results demonstrate the controller\u27s effectiveness in achieving stable hops and provide a method for tuning hop speeds. This research also paves the way for future projects by thoroughly documenting the leg\u27s physical parameters and addressing the challenge of implementing reliable impact and lift-off detection during experimental testing
AS-978-24 Resolution to Sunset the Custom of Cal Poly Time effective Fall Term 2026
Get PDFResolves that the Academic Senate of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo supports sunsetting the custom of “Cal Poly Time” for class scheduling thereby putting the campus on the same clock; and it further resolves that classes scheduled to begin on the hour or half hour will preserve at least a minimum of a 10-minute passing period between classes where possible; therefore it also resolves that additional scheduling patterns with starting times that vary from the hour or half hour time pattern will preserve a minimum 10 minute passing period between classes where possible; therefore it also resolves that this provision become effective beginning with the Fall term of 2026