The team’s objective is to develop and build a closed-loop alignment terminal to align a small glass tube with a brass ferrule. The team designed a robotic alignment terminal that only requires an operator to load the ferrule and cartridge holding the glass tube into mounts.

The mounts hold the cartridge and ferrule in the correct position ready for bonding. The terminal is capable of sensing and adjusting for concentricity to within 0.005 millimeters, axial alignment to within 0.05 millimeters, and parallelism alignment between the cartridge and ferrule.

The robotic terminal uses active image processing and micropositioners to align the cartridge and ferrule to the specified requirements. Once the operator loads the cartridge and ferrule, the process is completely automated and requires no further operator input.

The goal of this project is to develop a system that accurately simulates sand ingestion by auxiliary power turbine engines used in commercial aircraft.

The system designed tests cooling passages that keep the turbine from overheating. The small size and complex geometry of the cooling passages allow them to become clogged with sand, causing engine failure.

The team replicated the operating conditions of the engine during sand ingestion and then ran a series of tests under various flow configurations. The sponsor will use the team’s data as a starting point for a more extensive study of sand ingestion.

Secondary collisions are a life-threatening hazard for emergency response personnel and civilians at accident scenes. This project models a crowd-sourced emergency response system that engages local certified civilian contractors, allowing them to respond quickly to emergencies while reducing communication workload and mitigating risk of further property damage or loss of life.

The team designed and built a web-based emergency response system that illustrates the registration, verification, movement, allocation and confirmation of emergency resources via certified civilians. This software model is intended for government use.

System features include real-time traffic and meteorological data monitoring, cloud-based storage of incident records for later analysis, an automatically generated payment algorithm, and a location-based dispatching algorithm. The system is accessible on a responsive mobile platform.

Strut failure on the CAT 770 mining truck means costly downtime for the sponsor’s customers. The objective of this project is to design and implement a monitoring system for the truck’s hydraulic struts.

The system needs to monitor strut performance continuously during truck operation and alert the driver to strut behavior that indicates it is damaged.

Data gathered by the system from pressure, temperature and displacement sensors on the hydraulic struts is processed through developed algorithms to determine if the strut’s behavior matches the ideal within a set tolerance. The driver is prompted with the error and a mitigation strategy, such as recharging the strut with nitrogen or replacing it before it fails.

Sorbent systems are used in a wide range of applications, from chemical factories to aircraft cabins. Small-scale testing saves materials and time; this project’s goal is to design a small-scale system to test the efficiency and capacity of industrial-grade sorbents.

The team compared the adsorption and desorption capabilities of two sorbents: APG-III and AZ-300. Sorbents were tested for their ability to adsorb and desorb volatile organic compounds introduced into an air stream at low concentration, on a scale of parts per billion.

A ppbRAE 3000 wireless handheld volatile organic compound monitor, which is capable of ambient temperature adsorption and temperature-swing desorption, was used to acquire concentration data.

The goal of this project is to design a system that uses centrifugal force to remove as much dust as possible from a flowing air line with minimal loss of pressure.

The designed centrifugal particle separator removes fine dust, 1-100 microns in diameter, remaining in a high-pressure air line after the air has passed through a filter. Parameters modeled and tested include number of swirl blades, blade length, and migration length.

Mine sites around the globe use the sponsor’s 793F mining truck, which requires several antennas for everyday operation. The existing antenna configuration consists of multiple antenna mounting locations and an underused mast structure.

The mast structure is difficult to maintain and supports only a single antenna, so the team’s goal is to design and test a telescoping mast system that supports multiple antennas while being easier to safely maintain. The team’s solution is a lightweight, cost-efficient design featuring a highly integrated antenna mast system.

The new antenna mast system is raised and lowered by an electronic motor that allows technicians to perform maintenance safely. Multiple antennas can be mounted on the new mast, which is made of carbon fiber for high strength and low weight.

The goal of this project is to create a universal model for automated data centers in Power BI software. The model allows users to input specifications for a desired datacenter, such as size and location, and outputs optimal design specifications, projected costs and a 3-D SolidWorks representation of the data center.

The model performs its calculations by retrieving official data from the internet and combining it with input and previously saved data. The model is designed to help Microsoft plan future data centers, which will include features such as robotic maintenance, and to provide the ability to compare cost and performance of various data center configurations.

The labyrinth seal testing rig measures how efficiently different geometries of labyrinth seal reduce airflow leakage. The goal of this project is to validate existing simulated static data and evaluate toothed labyrinth flow statically.

The testing rig measures flow into the labyrinth seal and the pressure before the first and after the final teeth of the seal. The data collected from the flow meter and the two pressure sensors is used to create pressure ratio versus flow rate curves. These experimental curves are then compared to the simulated curves.

The rig rotates, but only static data was collected. One toothed cylinder was produced for this year of the project; cylinders produced in future years will be easily interchangeable.

The sponsor’s effort to improve its rotary aircraft simulation suite includes investigating how vibration is induced in its simulator. This entails expanding the system from vibrating the seat to vibrating the entire simulator platform.

Adding vibration feedback will better prepare pilots in training for the rotor feedback they would feel in a real aircraft. The goal of this project is to research existing vibration platforms and develop a new vibration system for the sponsor.

The system designed performs at or beyond the required performance standards while providing a marketable product for the sponsor to package with its simulator. Components of the design were stress-tested in SolidWorks; the design was finalized and test methods were written for the system, were it to be constructed.