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Innovations to Increase Plywood Shear Wall Design Capacity and Resiliency, MeGa Walls , Through Ductile Metal Strapping
Get PDFThe researchers of this project are three undergraduate Architectural Engineering students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Plywood shear walls are common structural elements in timber structures that resist lateral forces. Since their introduction to the industry in the 1950s, their shear capacities have remained essentially unchanged amongst the innovations of other wooden lateral systems. Prior to this project, Cal Poly undergraduate researchers have taken on the challenge of modernizing the shear wall. The “MeGa Wall” project was born: a system that implements metal gauge strapping which enhances a conventional wall by reducing nail connection failures. Full-scale experimental testing of these walls in Cal Poly’s high bay facility revealed the MeGa Walls nearly doubled the shear capacity but had sudden, brittle failure modes that needed to be avoided.
This project aims to continue the research by developing a strapping system that achieves two goals: increasing the shear capacity and maintaining the ductile behavior of a conventional plywood shear wall. The following report will encompass the means and methods used to design, construct, test, and analyze four unique shear walls. The first two MeGa Walls utilize a customized metal strap that spans across the wall’s adjacent panel edges, creating a fuse that causes the strap to yield. The final two walls provide supplemental observations and results that further our understanding of the first two MeGa Wall experiments. Results from the study indicate that the MeGa Walls designed with the fuse strap achieve our research goals of increasing capacity and maintaining ductility. If implemented in the industry the MeGa Wall can benefit architects with shortened wall lengths and provide alternatives to double-sided shear wall construction practices
CoolSplint: Inflammation Reduction Accessory
Get PDFThis document outlines a project sponsored by Elizabeth Mentel and Michael Clausson that addresses the shortcomings in current splinting options, particularly for wrist fractures in elderly patients. Stakeholders include clinicians, patients, and emergency medical technicians. Multiple improvements can be made to current splinting options to help alleviate inflammation along with splint versatility, affordability, accessibility, and ease of use. After determining the critical customer requirements, the primary objective of this project was to find a way to manage inflammation. The project explores existing splinting solutions and proposes a new design that utilizes cooling rods to reduce inflammation. The document reviews various patented splint designs, highlighting their advantages and drawbacks. Existing splints often face issues with inflammation, long-term effectiveness, and improper usage. The goal of this project is to redesign a splint add-on targeting wrist fractures, prioritizing reducing inflammation with the help of cooling rods to improve patient outcomes in the long run
The Wildland Firefighter Respiratory Protection Device
Get PDFThis paper presents the development of First Respire and their design of a powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) specifically curated for wildland firefighter while simultaneously addressing the critical absence of respiratory protection for wildland firefighters operating in the challenging wildland-urban interface (WUI) environments. Current respiratory protection options, such as bandanas and N95 masks, fall short in providing adequate defense against toxic particulate matter and gases, exposing firefighters to increased risks of health complications, including cancers and respiratory diseases. Through collaborative efforts of the Wildfire Conservancy, the WUI Fire Institute at Cal Poly, and CAL FIRE, First Respire aims to create a durable, NFPA 1984-compliant device that offers effective respiratory protection while considering the specific needs and challenges faced by wildland firefighters. This paper outlines the significant objectives, drawing from stakeholder discussions and numerical specifications outlined in NFPA 1984 standards. The design focuses on addressing key challenges such as respiratory resistance, weight distribution, duration of use, heat resistance, donning/doffing time, and communication interference. The device integrates two subsystems, air filter and air delivery, ensuring the interdependence of these subsystems for optimal performance. Consideration is given to the comfort, adjustability, and compatibility with existing gear to encourage widespread adoption
This is An Automated Software Platform for Grid Interconnection of Renewable Energy Resources.
Get PDFTo help curb climate change, the United States is rapidly electrifying many sectors of the energy economy, such as transportation (electric vehicles) and home heating (electric heat pumps). Thus, recent years have witnessed an explosion of businesses that want to connect and operate energy resources on the electric grid. However, getting an energy resource connected to the grid is an arduous process that takes years or more, requires specialized technical knowledge, and requires navigating complex and varying regulatory procedures. This project will develop a software platform that leverages AI and high-performance computing to automate and accelerate grid interconnection and energy asset operation. The platform will help energy project developers reduce their interconnection costs by automating aspects of the grid interconnection and asset management processes, including technical feasibility studies, portfolio optimization, and energy arbitrage
Empirical Support for Algorithmic Conjectures
Get PDFOur project focuses on a particular Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm, with applications in statistical physics, known as hardcore model Glauber dynamics. The target distribution of Glauber dynamics is a distribution of all of the independent sets within a graph. An independent set is a set of vertices within a graph with no two vertices in the set containing an edge between them. Our goal is to find whether or not the Glauber dynamics for sampling independent sets on trees mixes in time O(nlogn), and determining how the mixing time changes if we bias the algorithm in favor of larger or smaller sets. We did this by writing C++ code that approximately counts the number of independent sets in random trees of size n. This approximation is done by taking many samples using Glauber dynamics. We then compared the approximation against an exact dynamic programming algorithm to see how accurate it was, and repeated for different parameter values for Glauber dynamics. We used these different parameter values to get an idea of the mixing time of Glauber dynamics
Measurement Automation & Measurement System Research Endowment
Get PDFRoad travel safety is always the most important issue in transportation systems. In general, several factors cause road accidents, such as human error, vehicle mechanical failure, roadway limitations (e.g. pavement, lane geometry, etc.), and inclement weather conditions. The major focus of today’s transportation developments is related to making highway transportation safer, smarter, and greener to enhance livability. Many accidents are caused when drivers lack a better understanding of the surrounding traffic conditions because the driver not only needs to control his/her vehicle but also needs to be aware of the movements of the vehicles around him/her. A driver cannot be fully focused on the road continuously due to many factors, such as distractions or fatigue. A mobile wireless sensor network (MWSN) of interconnected vehicles and infrastructure has the potential to both improve traffic flow and increase safety for the traveling public. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Joint Office, interconnected vehicle applications provide connectivity between and among vehicles, infrastructure, and wireless devices to prevent crashes, provide safety, mobility, and environmental benefits, and provide continuous real-time connectivity to all users. These systems enable drivers to have 360-degree awareness through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) connectivity. Collectively V2V and V2I connectivity can be called V2X communication. In addition to providing information to drivers, this connectivity generates an enormous amount of new data about traffic patterns and road usage. ITS can apply this data for both short-term routing decisions and long-term planning for improved safety and reduced congestion. These short- and long-term optimizations at both the vehicle and infrastructure levels will enable vehicles to reach optimal fuel efficiency. Travel safety can be improved if vehicles can be designed to form groups for mutual interaction with each other to form a MWSN through V2X communications for intelligent transportation systems (ITS). With an increasing capacity of sensors available on vehicles, a need has arisen to make collaborative measurements of the information collected by individual vehicles to form an enhanced data set to improve the inter-vehicle safety features. Vehicles of the future will communicate both with each other and with the infrastructure to better serve drivers with autonomous maneuvering, traffic data for improved navigation and route optimization, analytics for increased traffic flow and safety, and automatic accident reporting for reduced emergency response times
Analyzing the Determinants of College Graduates’ Salaries in the US: A Data Analytics Approach
Get PDFIn this project, we will explore a range of factors that influence the salaries of US college graduates. Demographic variables such as gender, race, and ethnicity; educational variables such as fields of study; and professional variables, including job and employer characteristics, will be examined to understand their impact on salaries. Our research will extend to a spatial and temporal analysis, offering a deeper understanding of how these factors vary across different states and over time, revealing critical disparities linked to gender, race, and ethnicity. The study will provide valuable insights that can help individuals make well-informed decisions regarding their career trajectory, assist advocates for workplace equality in their efforts to promote fairness, and guide employers towards addressing wage gaps to ensure equal pay for equal work. The project will leverage the extensive dataset provided by the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG), a biennial survey that has been gathering detailed information on college graduates since the 1970s. The NSCG is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and conducted by the Census Bureau. The project will embrace the principles of the Teacher-Scholar model, offering a hands-on learning experience for student researchers. Through active engagement in data collection, processing, and analysis, along with the utilization of advanced statistical and data analytical techniques, students will gain both theoretical knowledge and practical skills. To translate our findings into actionable insights for decision-makers, policy analysts, and the general public, we will create an interactive dashboard using Tableau/PowerBI. This tool will offer a dynamic and user-friendly interface for the exploration and interpretation of our research findings
Distributed Multi-Robot Localization and Coordination Framework for Mobile Robots
Get PDFThis project aims to develop an experimental framework for multiple mobile robots, both in simulation and real-world hardware, using ROS 2 as the primary operating system. Utilizing TurtleBot 3 platforms, the team will establish a robust setup that enables tasks such as distributed localization, autonomous navigation, path planning, and formation control for mobile robots. Leveraging simulation environments like Gazebo, the project will replicate real-world setups in a simulated environment for testing and development. All tasks, communication, and sensor integration will be implemented using ROS 2, ensuring seamless coordination and interoperability among the robots. The project involves integrating various sensors and conducting hands-on experiments with TurtleBot 3 robots to validate the system\u27s performance. By bridging simulation and physical experimentation, this framework will provide a comprehensive platform for testing and validating multi-robot coordination algorithms and control strategies. The team will also research and implement various distributed localization and formation control algorithms to further enhance the mobile robots\u27 autonomous capabilities
Cryogenic Fuel Applications to Sustainable Commercial Aircraft
Get PDFFinding a source of clean and renewable energy is one of the greatest challenges humanity will face in the 21st century. With populations expanding, developing countries increasing their use of resources, and the rapid and alarming effects of climate change, a shift to a sustainable future is an existential prospect.
The goal of our project is to take the first steps toward getting safety procedures and lab space established, so mechanical engineering senior projects can quickly begin to experiment with cryogenic fuels. They will explore the application of cryogenic fuels to commercial aviation
Design And Implementation Of An Inverted Short Baseline Acoustic Positioning System
Get PDFThis document details the design, implementation, testing, and analysis of an inverted short baseline acoustic positioning system. The system presented here is an above-water, air-based prototype for an underwater acoustic positioning system; it is designed to determine the position of remotely-operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in the global frame using a method that does not drift over time.
A ground-truth positioning system is constructed using a stacked hexapod platform actuator, which mimics the motion of an AUV and provides the true position of an ultrasonic microphone array. An ultrasonic transmitter sends a pulse of sound towards the array; microphones on the array record the pulse of sound and use the time shift between the microphone signals to determine the position of the transmitter relative to the receiver array. The orientation of the array, which is necessary to transform the position estimate to the global frame, is calculated using a Madgwick filter and data from a MEMS IMU. Additionally, a dead reckoning change-in-position estimate is formed using the IMU data. The acoustic position estimate is combined with the dead reckoning estimate using a Kalman filter. The accuracy of this filtered position estimate was verified to 22.1mm within a range of 3.88m in this air-based implementation. The ground-truth positioning system runs on an ESP32 microcontroller using code written in C++, and the acoustic positioning system runs on two STM32 microcontrollers using code written in C.
Extrapolation of these results to the underwater regime, as well as recommendations for improving upon this work, are included at the end of the document. All code written for this thesis is available on GitHub and is open-source and well-documented