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Training Facility
Get PDFThe Training Facility is a two-story, 142,500 sq. ft. building constructed in 1994 at the Savannah River Site DOE complex. The facility primarily contains training rooms, office space, and a cafeteria. Fire protection features of the Training Facility are detailed in this report, including key life safety, suppression, alarm, and structural features. The building has several deficiencies; the second floor has an occupant load of 911 occupants but is only provided with an exit capacity of 800, and occupancy size per floor exceeds what is allowed for assembly occupancies on the first floor. The travel distance from the records storage room is 220 ft and does not meet the 100 ft requirement imposed by an ordinary-hazard storage occupancy. Conversely, the building has several over-designed features that enhance safety. Water supply consisting of two 600,000 gal tanks greatly exceeds water demand of 33,000 gal. Ordinary Hazard Group 1 criteria is applied where Light Hazard is typically acceptable, and Ordinary Hazard Group 2 criteria is applied where Ordinary Hazard Group 1 is typically acceptable. 2-hr fire barriers are provided in several locations where non-rated construction would otherwise be acceptable. Stairwells are pressurized to prevent smoke infiltration despite only being required if a floor is occupied greater than 75 feet above fire department vehicle access.
Two design fires are examined for impacts to life safety to evaluate whether tenability criteria are met. If a fire ignites in the east lobby, smoke passes through an open stairwell and impacts occupants on the second floor who are not intimate with the fire. The required safe egress time (RSET) is 449 seconds, and the available safe egress time (ASET) is 193 seconds without smoke control and 200 seconds with smoke control. ASET is not sufficient for the RSET. It is recommended that occupants are encouraged through an evacuation plan to use enclosed stairwells to egress, rather than use the unenclosed east stairwell. If a fire ignites in the food court and blocks both exterior exits, occupants have enough time to egress through the remaining interior passageways before untenable conditions are met. Untenable conditions are met at a single exit after 120 seconds and met at all exits after 225 seconds, resulting in a conservative ASET of 120 seconds, while the RSET is only 104 seconds. To ensure occupants continue to have enough time to egress it is recommended that significantly larger fuel loads, such as Christmas trees, are banned in the food court
Optimal False Data Injection (FDI) In Simulated Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) Systems
Get PDFIn the rapidly advancing field of autonomous vehicles, ensuring the security and reliability of self-driving systems is crucial. Autonomous vehicle systems, such as cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC), must undergo significant research and testing before their integration into commercial intelligent transportation systems. CACC considers multiple vehicles in close proximity as a single entity, or platoon, with each vehicle equipped with a controller that uses sensor-based measurements and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication to control inter-vehicle spacing. While this system offers numerous potential benefits for traffic safety and efficiency, it is also susceptible to False Data Injection (FDI) attacks, which can cause the system to behave in potentially life-threatening ways. Testing these scenarios in the real world is infeasible due to expense, safety concerns, and the use of theoretical technologies.
This study presents an implementation of a vehicle platoon in a simulated environment where the vehicles\u27 controllers were tuned to maintain desired inter-vehicle spacing. Various FDI signals were then implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of malicious attacks, including a novel parameterized sinusoidal FDI signal. Furthermore, acknowledging the necessity for future anomaly detection schemes and noise filtration, a theoretical optimal attack—generated using a model of the sinusoidal FDI attack and identification of optimal FDI values—was also evaluated
Northrop Grumman Collaboration Project
Get PDFThe Northrop Grumman Collaboration project, emphasizing the Mechanical Engineering Senior Design team, is focusing on developing the Fire Response Aircraft (FRA) for the autonomous search and rescue system. The goal of this aircraft is to scan a predefined flight path and locate a simulated fire in which other vehicles will respond to the area. This Final Design Review report highlights the overall design, manufacturing, testing, and discussion of the final prototype. Any new changes to the final design since the Critical Design Review report are noted and include appropriate justification. The manufacturing processes for each component are outlined in detail as well as the required steps taken to properly integrate all parts to complete the final prototype. Additionally, testing of the wings, landing gear, and skin adhesion are discussed along with the results to provide verification that the aircraft has met the structural design requirements. Lastly, this document leads into discussion regarding the outcomes of the project and introduces some recommendations and next steps should efforts on the project continue
Automated Expanding Fireplace
Get PDFThe Final Design Review (FDR) encompasses information regarding the final design verification prototype (FVP), manufacturing, testing, and future recommendations for the Expanding Fireplace Senior Project sponsored by the SLO Civic Ballet. The project aims to create the frame of an expanding fireplace set piece for The Nutcracker production at the Cal Poly Performing Arts Center in December 2024. The current set piece being used has unfavorable features that will be addressed with the new design. The current set piece being used has unfavorable features that have been addressed with the new design we have developed. Our sponsors have proposed several notable design changes since the Concept Design Review (CDR). These changes include adding beams across the top of the vertical beams that can slide along one another, allowing the frame to maintain a closed shape when expanding. This allows for more ease in attaching decorations to the set piece. Another proposed change was to place a turntable bearing under each caster wheel, allowing the wheels to act similarly to triple swivel caster wheels, which experience little to no jog when changing directions. This will be useful since the moving base subsystems change their rolling direction during production when transitioning from expanding to contracting. Other changes implemented on our behalf include reinforcing certain aspects of the stationary and moving base subsystems by changing areas that used 2020 extrusions (20mm by 20mm) for 2040 extrusions (20mm by 40mm). Lastly, to support the beams across the top, which our sponsors proposed, we implemented a diagonal support beam on each moving base subsystem. The final design consists of a stationary base, two moving bases on either side of the stationary base, and vertical sliders attached onto each respective moving base. The stationary base serves as a mounting point for the motor, several pulleys, and an overall datum from which the expansion occurs. The two moving bases can move outward, allowing for expansion in the horizontal plane. They are guided out by sliding rails attached to the moving bases and nested into the stationary base. A pulley system directly powered by the winch facilitates this horizontal movement. The moving bases also interface with the vertical sliders. A fixed-length pulley system powers the vertical sliders movement. This allows us to expand vertically as a result of the horizontal expansion by fixing an end of the pulley system on the opposing moving base and another end at the bottom of the vertically sliding beam. Our design eliminates the need for a separate power source for vertical expansion, resulting in the use of a single motor to power the entire expansion of the fireplace. The verification prototype met the major goals of expansion time, low noise output, and desired weight, but it fell short in terms of overall desired expansion. The fireplace expanded roughly four feet in each dimension, but roughly seven feet was desired
2024 Marine Energy Collegiate Competition
Get PDFPolyWave Energy is the second team from California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo to compete in the Marine Energy Collegiate Competition. PolyWave Energy consists of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Business Administration students who have worked together from September 2023 to May 2024 on designing, building, and testing a marine power device to serve a selected market.
In response to the escalating concerns surrounding carbon emissions, climate change, and the depletion of fossil fuels, California Polytechnic State University’s Polywave Energy team has developed a sustainable and reliable energy source for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) charging. Through extensive research of the AUV market and stakeholder interviews, our team found that companies within the oil and gas industry would benefit most from our charging device.
The device is a rack and pinion wave energy converter. Featuring a floating portion in the water to capture the vertical motion of the waves, the device efficiently converts this motion into rotational energy. The rotational energy spins a generator, which stores electricity in a battery for AUV charging. The rotational and electrical systems will be mounted above the water on a fixed platform, and the relative motion between the floating portion and the fixed structure is used to create electricity.
In our project, we built a scaled down model of our device, scaled to meet the constraints of our testing setup. We tested our model on land, using wave data from the Gulf of Mexico, our target location for the device. Our team underwent extensive analysis to select and design components, ensuring that the device would be durable, safe, and effective in producing electricity. Numerous prototypes and iterations brought us to the final specifications of our device, for which our team procured the parts, fabricated, and assembled them. The device was tested under six conditions and successfully generated power in all conditions. The device functioned as expected, showing promise for future marine power generation and implementation in charging of AUVs
College Students Learn How to “Take Action!” to Disrupt Racial Microaggressions
Get PDFThe topic of prejudice and discrimination may be addressed in a variety of disciplines. When these topics are discussed in the classroom, students may not recognize microaggressions as acts of explicit or implicit prejudice. We designed and evaluated an Apply and Take Action! assignment to help students recognize microaggressions and learn techniques to disrupt them. Students were asked to identify definitions, key terms, and examples of microaggressions and microinterventions, and apply this knowledge to address a hypothetical scenario. Students favorably evaluated and recommended the assignment’s use. This assignment may benefit students who are targets of microaggressions, as well as those who strive to be allies by being taught techniques to address these less “visible,” yet harmful, forms of bias. Instructors play an important role in educating students about these more insidious forms of bias and providing them with practical examples and tools of how to disrupt them. Keywords: microaggressions; college teaching; teaching of psychology; social psycholog
Ross Dam Micro Hydro Project
Get PDFThe Ross Dam and reservoir in Angels Camp needs a reliable power source for powering its SCADA system which monitors its water level and flow rate. Currently, the existing hydro power supply is very unreliable and needs to be replaced with a micro hydro generator system that can consistently produce power to charge the onsite batteries. This paper details the design and implementation of a micro hydro Pelton wheel replacement system designed by our senior project team.
Outlined in this report is our design overview of the system and how our project will redesign and optimize the use of the onsite fluid power. Explained in this report is how our design will utilize the static pressure from the penstock by adding a static tap that will separate the flow and give us consistent fluid power. Also discussed in this paper is the engineering design of the Pelton wheel, its cups, the housing, and the generator, as well as how these critical components will interact with each other to optimize power production. Also explained throughout the report is the various design challenges that the team faced and how our final design adapted throughout the design and manufacturing process.
Also discussed in this report, is the manufacturing details of the final product and how each of the critical components of our design were manufactured and assembled. In addition, the various challenges that we encountered specifically during the manufacturing process and how we had to redesign components for feasible manufacturing are highlighted. Once our project’s initial design had been completed, we emphasized testing our design to further optimize the Pelton wheel’s performance by varying the nozzle positions and directions. Also from our testing, we were able to briefly simulate scaled down flow conditions, and demonstrate our Pelton wheel’s ability to operate as intended and ultimately create electrical power
Enabling EMG-based Silent Speech Transcription Through Speech-To-Text Transfer Learning
Get PDFIn recent years, advances in deep learning have allowed various forms of electrographic signals, such as electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG), to be used as a viable form of input in artificial intelligence applications, particularly for applications in the medical field. One such topic that EMG inputs have been used is in silent speech interfaces, or devices capable of processing speech without an audio-based input. The goal of this thesis is to explore a novel method of training a machine learning model to be used for silent speech interface development: using transfer learning to leverage a pre-trained speech recognition model for classifying EMG-based silent speech inputs.
To accomplish this, we pass labeled EMG data through a custom transformation process, turning the data into musical notes that represent changes in an EMG sensor as silent speech data is captured. This transformed data was used as input into a pre-trained speech recognition model, and the model\u27s classification layers were retrained to better fit the incoming data. The custom transformation process and model demonstrated progress towards effective classification with a small, closed-vocabulary dataset but showed no signs of effective training with a larger, open-vocabulary dataset. The effectiveness on the small closed-vocabulary dataset demonstrate that training a model to recognize EMG data using transfer learning on a pre-trained speech to text model is a viable approach
Power Controller for Insulated Solar Electric Cooker
Get PDFInsulated Solar Electric Cookers, or ISECookers, are devices created to aid those in impoverished regions improve safety, sustainability, and quality of life regarding their cooking practices. ISECookers present an alternative to traditional biofuel/biomass energy sources and provide a closed-loop, self-sustaining system that can be used in a variety of environments. These devices present solutions to widespread issues such as pollution, deforestation, and hazardous emissions as a result of traditional cooking in developing regions around the world. A notable obstacle of these devices is power delivery. Given the varying conditions experienced by a solar panel (inclement weather, irradiance irregularities, etc.), it is crucial to optimize the power delivered to the resistive heating element.
To optimize power delivery from a photovoltaic panel to the resistive heating element of the ISECooker, two distinct approaches were designed and analyzed. A cost-effective solution was developed using comparator logic to modulate the operating point of the load, and a more efficient system was presented in the form of a boost converter and analog control system. The two approaches presented unique benefits and tradeoffs - notably, the comparator switching circuit has a much-lower per-build cost than the boost converter approach, while the latter provides greater optimization of power delivery and higher power delivery across all irradiance ranges. In this report, the design, development, construction, and results of both approaches are outlined and compared through a tradeoff analysis to determine which of the methods is more beneficial to the client, both at the current stage of the project lifecycle and in future implementations